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THE LAVENDER LAD 


/ 









LAVENDER 

LAD 


By DOLF WYLLARDE 


BOSTON 


With a frontispiece in fall color 
from a painting Ip 












































































Copyright, 1923, by 
L. C. Page & Company 
(incorporated) 

All rights reserved 


Made in U. S. A. 


First Impression, July, 1923 


Transferred*'^*# 


PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY 
BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A. 


AUC 27 '23 



FOREWORD 

The tune of " Buoy my Lavender ” is familiar to all 
London, and belongs to its historical street-cries. 
The words vary, but I have written them as I best re¬ 
member hearing them, as a child. The tune of “ Laven¬ 
der's Blue " is my own, as I knew of no setting that 
would suit me ; but I am indebted for the accompani¬ 
ment to Mr. Reginald Yarrow. 

DOLF WYLLARDE. 


















CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. THE COMING OF THE BOY 



• 

PAGE 

9 

II. 

JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 

- 

mm 

- 

32 

III. 

LAVENDER HARVEST 

- 

m 

m 

53 

IV. 

THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 

- 

- 

- 

70 

V. 

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 

DISTILLERY 


87 

VI. 

A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE 

GATE 


100 

VII. 

BREATH OF EVIL 

- 

a* 

- 

122 

VIII. 

TELLING THE BEES 

- 

* 

- 

147 

IX. 

THE BOY AT BAY 

wm 

- 

- 

165 

X. 

KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 

- 

- 

- 

174 

XI. 

THE DROWNING LADY 

- 

- 

- 

197 

XII. 

THE CRACK OF DOOM 

- 

- 

- 

210 

XIII. 

THE GOING OF THE BOY 


- 

- 

227 

XIV. 

AT MIDNIGHT 

- 

- 

- 

237 

XV. 

" lavender’s BLUE I ” 

- 

- 

- 

249 

XVI. 

PEACE 

mm 

** 

• 

264 














THE LAVENDER LAD 


CHAPTER I 

THE COMING OF THE BOY 

HALF-past seven on a July morning is not a bad time 
to be out of doors, provided the day is fair. The 
clock, it is true, said half-past eight, but it being 
“ summer time ” the sun was cheated of an hour, and 
indignantly denied the fact that he ought to have 
been shining with more strength, by touching the 
tips of the sleeping trees and the dew-laden fields 
with cool golden fingers. 

It was rather chilly going through the Surrey lanes, 
though the great cart-horses found it warm enough 
even with the empty van behind them, and did not 
hurry themselves on the homeward way. They had 
turned out at four o’clock yesterday afternoon to 
take the sweet load of lavender to London, had stood 
meekly outside the retailers’ to be unloaded, and 
had munched their breakfast in the dawn while the 
bunches were sent on into Covent Garden. They 
did not actually take their produce into the market, 
but they had been near-by, and the homeward route 
was taken soberly—sixteen good miles both ways, 
and thirty-two in all. 


10 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


The two men in the cart had been up all night also, 
and nodded every now and then, pulling up with a 
jerk to admonish the blameless horses, or to pass a 
remark to each other as if they had never been asleep. 

“ Git on, Em’rald ! Now then, Ruby !•—It’s going 
to be warmish, Bill! ” 

“ It may be anything it likes as soon as I turn into 
bed for a nap, Jonah ! I’d have slep’ the way down 
from Croydon if it hadn’t been for the bloomin’ baskets. 
The load ’ud be in the road before now but for me, 
they’re so badly packed.” 

He gave a vicious prod at the pile of bushel baskets 
that wobbled ominously, and kicked aside the corner 
of the “ archangel ” mats which had covered the 
lavender and lay at the back of the van. As he did 
so he rubbed his eyes and edged nearer to the driver. 

“ Jonah, did you see anything alive in the van when 
we left London ? ” 

“Nothing but fleas, if that's what you’re after,” 
said Jonah ironically. “ Always plenty of them to 
be got in the Market, and worse still! ” 

“ I’ve thought all the way down as there was some¬ 
thing moving under the mats—a stray dog or a fowl.” 

“ Why don’t you look then, and find out ? ” said 
the driver, yawning, as he swung his horses down the 
Leith road. “ Cl-ck, Ruby !•—Git along, Em’rald.” 

“ I’m not fond o’ strange dogs,” said Bill, with a 
distrustful glance at the pile of coarse matting heaped 
into a mound near its centre. “ He might turn on 
me if disturbed. I’ll wait till we git in, and Hector 
will send him about his biz dam’ quick.” 

Jonah nodded sleepily, too tired to assert himself 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


ii 


\ 



as usual or to tell his companion that he was a funk. 
Bill was rather timid with animals, as he knew, and 
the men on the farm who had to do with the cattle 
and horses looked upon him as a poor thing—good 
for the lavender and nothing else. Nevertheless he 
was one of the best cutters and binders at Leith, and 
his master could better have parted with a dozen good 
teamsters. 

Emerald and Ruby quickened their pace and broke 
into a rough trot as the gate of their own farm ap¬ 
peared in a turning of the road. The jolting of the 
empty van was uncomfortable even for the men, and 
Bill cast a suspicious eye at the heap of mats. It 
seemed to him that it moved more than the pace 
warranted, as though something beneath tried to 
steady itself. He had to drop off the van a minute 
later, however, to open the gate for the impatient 
horses, and Jonah took them at a handsome trot up 
to the farm while his mate walked on more slowly 
behind. 

When they arrived at the stables the team would 
hardly stand for all Jonah’s “ wooaing ” and scolding, 
so eager were they for their stalls. It seemed as if 
they were going to take their lightened vehicle in 
with them, and Jonah swung himself down from his 
seat and took hold of their heads roughly, jerking at 
the bits for punishment and causing a commotion of 
trampling and ringing chains that brought his master 
out, as he certainly did not intend. 

“ Let their heads alone, man—don’t jab th~m like 
that ! ” said John Daish imperatively; and before the 
vexed driver could recover either his temper or his 




12 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


self-possession, he found himself put on one side, and 
the fretting horses were being soothed and steadied 
at the same time by a stronger hand on their reins. 

“ The - beasts tried to bolt for their stalls ! ” 

muttered Jonah, angry with himself for his exhibition 
of temper and the horses for their disobedience. 

" You know what the rule is on this farm about 
the teams,” said Daish, with no lack of decision in 
his manner, though he spoke without heat. “ If you 
can’t keep your temper with them you must try other 
work. You are pretty tired, I expect. Go and get 
your breakfast before you turn in. Where’s Bill 
Somers ? ” 

“ Coming along behind,” said Jonah sulkily. He 
omitted the “ sir ” which he owed to his master, on 
purpose, with the sullen defiance of a child; but 
John Daish took no notice at the minute. He could 
handle men with as much judgment as horses. 

The altercation about the team had kept the atten¬ 
tion of both master and man off the van, and neither 
of them had noticed anything fall or slip out of it. 
But when Bill arrived on the scene a minute later, he 
stared at the heap of archangel mats and a bushel 
basket that had fallen to the ground over the tail¬ 
board. 

“ Jonah, did you see anything o’ that dog ? ” he 
asked sharply. 

“ What dog ? ” growled the driver, turning on his 
heel towards the men’s cottages at the back of the 

farmhouse. " You're a - fool, Bill. Might ’ave 

bin on the drink, seeing dogs that ain’ there.” 

“ Well, it’s gone now, I grant yer. Must have 




THE COMING OF THE BOY 


13 



slipped out and knocked over one of the baskets when 
yer weren't looking. And yer needn’t be so ratty, 
anyway.” 

Bill, not having been witness of Jonah's discomfiture, 
was injured at his companion’s ill-temper, for Jonah, 
replying nothing, stumped off to get his breakfast 
from his wife and go to bed, leaving his master to 
stable the team if he would. John Daish, leading 
Emerald to his stall, paused at the stable door and 
looked back at Bill Somers. 

“ What dog was that, Somers ? ” 

“ I thought as there was something alive in the van, 
sir, under the mats. A stray dog or a fowl, crept 
in while we was at Mr. Biram's. It’s gone now, right 
enough.” He turned over the mats, which had cer¬ 
tainly collapsed from their former position, and showed 
that they had nothing to conceal. 

“ Possibly it was when the horses plunged that the 
mats were shaken together and the basket fell,” said 
Daish. “ Go and get your breakfast like Jonah. I 
will see to the horses.” 

He stabled the good beasts himself, grooming them 
with as practised a hand as any of his men, and having 
fed and watered them left them munching in a happy 
peace. As he came out of the stable the day had 
advanced another hour from the moment when Bill 
first spoke of the supposititious dog, and the sun was 
really beginning to promise warmth later on. John 
Daish stood in the doorway a minute, looking out 
across the yard to the row of cowhouses opposite, and 
further off to the pond and the great barn that held 
the machinery for distilling the lavender which was 



*4 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


the chief cultivation on his farm. His face in the 
morning sunlight had the grave beauty and serenity 
of a Greek statue, though his features were too massive 
and of a different type to the Greek. Only in the line 
of the head and neck, and the very thick rippling hair, 
was there a suggestion of the Hermes or the Disc- 
thrower, and his colouring was entirely Anglo-Saxon, 
—hair the colour of ripe corn, not golden so much as 
gold burnt into brown, eyes deeply blue like the sea 
rather than the sky, and a skin that was tanned and 
ruddy together. He was a tall man and loosely made, 
his whole body supple with the open-air life that he 
led and the hard labour in the fields, for he was a 
working farmer and no gentleman farming his 
land for pastime as well as for profit. His entire 
unconsciousness of his own personal beauty was the 
result of habit rather than ignorance. A man cannot 
be ignorant who reads admiration in every pair of 
eyes, man’s or woman's, that looks upon him; but 
he need not necessarily be vain. 

He turned aside from the stables, and crossing the 
driving road to the farmhouse entered the distillery. 
If some strange dog had got in and hidden himself 
in the dusk of the place there would be a fresh com¬ 
motion when his own house-dog, Hector, discovered 
him, and Daish wished to save the poor creature 
from a fight which must certainly end in disabling, 
if not killing, him. Hector’s breed was uncertain, 
but his fighting qualities were not. There was probably 
a strain of the bull in him, certainly of the mastiff. 
He was as morose and surly as Jonah Wickham, but 
he loved his master with a whole-hearted affection 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


15 


that added jealousy to his other vices. Hector was 
a one-man dog, and no pet of the farm-hands ; but 
he was an excellent guard on a lonely farm, and the 
fear of him had gone abroad into miles of country 
round about. 

The great barn had originally been built for the 
storing of grain, and even now one end of it was 
walled in like a pit for the lavender if the crop was 
unusually heavy. As a rule there was no more than 
could be worked from day to day at distilling time, 
or rather through day and night, for once the dis¬ 
tilling began it could not stop until the precious oil 
was all extracted. On the floor of the building stood 
the great boiler rising up through the staging into the 
darkness above, and the condensers which took the 
place of the old-fashioned vat. John Daish had come 
into the farm as a young man, with modern notions, 
and had replaced the former methods of distilling with 
simplified machinery which was yet so new as to be a 
startling innovation amongst the lavender-growers, 
and was looked upon with distrust by less enter¬ 
prising men. He would not lightly forget those days 
and nights when the new plant was tried for the first 
time, and the great boiler nearly cooked those who 
must needs work in its vicinity because it was not yet 
lagged—or what is called “ jacketed ” in a marine 
engine. After the initial outlay and anxiety the new 
methods had more than justified their trial, both in 
easier work and safety for the men. There was an 
inward satisfaction in Johns heart whenever he stood 
among those small, nimble condensers and remembered 
the clumsy contrivances of a former day. The men 


i6 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


were proud of the machinery now, and kept it in good 
condition even through the idle winter, so that it 
needed very little cleaning before he wanted to start 
work in August. 

The distillery was always a dusky place, for he had 
no gas or electric plant of his own. On the upper 
floor, where the coppers were fed with the lavender, 
and the waste afterwards ejected, the work was lighted 
by great wooden doors that opened outwards and 
admitted light and air ; and at night by strong Ameri¬ 
can lamps. When the copper was not at work it was 
covered with a hood which was bolted down to the 
rim, and round the edge of this hood was a water seal 
which prevented the steam from escaping. The hoods 
were on now, the machinery at rest, and the wooden 
doors closed. But there was little hiding-place for a 
dog, even in the gloom, and after a cursory glance 
from the wooden stair, Daish descended again, wonder¬ 
ing if the animal had got round the cold boiler or 
behind a heap of coke with which it was fed. The 
only other sanctuary it could have found was in the 
storage pit, and he walked over to the low brick wall, 
remembering that, the lavender crop being light this 
summer, he had utilised the pit to store some fodder 
for the horses. There were a few sacks of grain down 
there, and two or three trusses of hay, one of which had 
been partly used. He went down two brick steps 
into the pit and shifted some of the loose hay, expecting 
that any animal, if disturbed, would make a bolt of 
it and rush past him rather than burrow deeper into 
its hiding-place. 

Suddenly he gave a sharp exclamation, almost like 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


17 


an oath—“ My God ! ” His hand, groping in the 
darkness, had closed on the shoulder-blade of some¬ 
thing human rather than the hairy coat of an animal, 
and he felt a coarse fabric, like unbleached calico, in 
his fingers. The thing, whatever it was, did not 
struggle, and he dragged it out of its nest in the hay, 
evidently roused from such a deep sleep that it was 
hardly awake even now. The growing sunlight, 
coming in more freely at this end of the barn, showed 
him that he held a slight and skinny boy by the arm, 
ragged and dirty and so ill-nourished in appearance 
that it was impossible to guess his age. The intruder 
flung the other arm up instinctively as if to ward off 
a blow, and Daish almost let go his hold in the reproof 
which the action dealt him. 

“ What are you doing here, boy ? ” he said, more 
gently than he might have spoken save for that betray¬ 
ing movement. 

The child—he was hardly more in stature, at least— 
looked up with a pair of eyes so dark as to seem black, 
but full of a fierce cunning. His hair was dark also 
and made his head nothing but a round black ball 
over a pinched wedge of a face, colourless save for 
the dark eyes. 

“ I come out in yer cart/’ he said glibly, and then, 
his voice rising to a practised whine, “ I’m so tired I 
fell asleep in ’ere so’s the men shouldn’t turn me out. 
Let me stop, guv’nor. I ain’t doing no ’arm.” 

“ You can’t stop here,” said John Daish firmly. 
** I’ve got a great dog who would drive you out if he 
found you, and might half kill you. What made you 
come down in the van ? ” 

B 


i8 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


u I wanted to get out of London—I've bin nearly 
took to quod for ‘ wanderin’ ’ two or three times. 
I tried to sleep in the Market last night, but you don’t 
get ’alf a chance since they done away with the Arches. 
Leaden’all's better, but they know me too well round 
there. I ain’t ’ad no sleep for two or three nights.” 
He yawned in Daish’s face, showing that his teeth at 
least were as white and sharp as a little wolf’s. “ I made 
my lucky inter your cart ’cos it smelt ser precious good!” 

The raw Cockney accent made Daish almost shrink, 
and the expression in the bright eyes, which were 
becoming more wakeful and calculating every minute. 
He looked down at this waif of humanity spewed up 
by the sea of London at his threshold, and felt unusually 
helpless and undecided. It seemed a case for the 
Barnado Homes rather than rescue work out here in 
the country ; but he did not know how to get the boy 
back to London on the instant, and in the meantime 
he could not turn him adrift any more than he would 
have done the stray dog, though he sought to save it 
from Hector. 

“ Do you belong to London, boy ? You know 
nothing much of the country, I suppose ? ” 

“ Lord love yer, yes ! I bin on the tramp most of 
my life. Born in a gipsy camp, and eddicated by a 
one-eyed pedlar who swore awful, guv’nor ! It was 
spoiling my morals, so I ’ad to leave ’im.” He shook 
his round black head with an air of pious hypocrisy 
that was inimitable, and despite his rags and his dirt 
and his emaciation, Daish felt that the Father of Lies 
had more probably sired this imp of wickedness tnan 
any gipsy, rogue though he might be. 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


19 

“ Did you want work on the farm then ? ” he said 
more curtly. “ What can you do ? ” 

” Dunno yet,” said the boy with one of his too- 
quick glances out of the shrewd eyes. “ What's your 
farm ? ” 

” Lavender mostly. What you smelt in the van. 
We send it up to market in flower this month, and 
next we shall distil it for the oil—the scent that you 
see in bottles in the shops.” He found it difficult to 
explain a “ luxury trade ” to this small, starved 
creature. 

But the boy’s face brightened with a compre¬ 
hension that was uglier than ignorance. 

“ What the girls uses to make 'emselves sweet ! ” 
he said, sticking his tongue into his lean cheek. “ Lord 
love yer ! I know. Seen ’em round the Garden often 
’nough. Yer can smell ’em a mile off! ” 

Daish drew back with a feeling of repulsion. “ Never 
mind—that’s not what I meant,” he said. “ Would 
you like to see it growing ? ” 

“ Right-o ! ” said the imp, and turned to follow 
his leader, swinging himself up over the brick wall with 
an ease that at least promised much for his agility. 
They crossed the road together, a strange pair in the 
morning sunshine, and walked across a piece of 
rough grass where chickens were straying, to a rail 
with a gate that let them through to sloping land 
beyond. 

The ground immediately in front of them rose in a 
gradual sweep that rounded to the left and showed 
them nothing but an excellent crop of potatoes. 
Daish wa ked along the level, skirting the patch, the 


20 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


boy following him, and then as they passed the bend 
it seemed as if the world were suddenly clothed in blue 
smoke. For the lavender was planted in straight 
lines that ran uphill to the sky, with a space of half a 
yard or so between the bushes w T here a man might 
walk ; but the branches spread generously and filled 
the picture as the lines ran together in perspective, 
and the colour was not the dull mauve grey of the 
faded bunches sold in the streets or for scent bags, but 
the flowers being fully out it glowed into something 
that was almost purple at its deepest—blue at its 
faintest. Over the rippling heads hung a cloud of 
insects already, as if the precious scent and honey must 
be garnered with every minute of the day—white 
butterflies, small winged things too minute to classify, 
and the great wild bees as well as the legitimate deni¬ 
zens of the hive. These droned at their work with a 
murmur that seemed the audible joy of the summer 
morning, and as the wind bent the lavender it tossed 
perfume into the untainted air. 

The boy stopped short with an intake of the breath 
more expressive than any exclamation. Daish looked 
down at the round black head half curiously, and 
saw the black eyes expand and soften as if with tears. 
For the moment the alteration of the little pinched 
face was extraordinary, and even his voice was softened 
so that it lost its raw Cockney twang and sounded like 
some creature suddenly elevated. 

“ Oh, but this is-—— ” he began; and then his face 
narrowed again in its cunning as if a blight fell on it, 
and he stuck his tongue in his hollow cheek with repul¬ 
sive humour. 



THE COMING OF THE BOY 


21 


“ Lummy ! don't yer just feel as if yer could eat 
it ! " he said. 

Daish turned his eyes away from the sharpened 
face, irritatingly disappointed. For the moment he 
had almost fancied he saw the soul in that stunted 
body, and now found nothing but a warped mind. 
But the boy thrust his hands into the pockets of his 
ragged knickerbockers, and tilted a comically deter¬ 
mined chin in the air, by no means repelled by the 
man’s disgust. 

“ Look 'ere, I'm going to stay," he said. “ I'm 
going to stay with that ! " He waved a dirty hand at 
the fields of coloured sweetness, and again for the 
moment that ennobling look came upon his face and 
made Daish hesitate. 

“ I don’t want a boy on the farm—unless he 
knows something of the work and can make himself 
useful." 

“ You could learn me," said the boy, with infinite 
self-confidence. "You could learn me anythink. 
Quick as a tyke I am." 

The boast almost made John Daish smile, for there 
was something of the terrier in this quick, cunning 
little arab of the streets and roads—the " lost dog " 
type that fends and steals for itself. 

“ Well, what’s your name, lad ? " he said, not 
unkindly. 

“ Charley." 

“ Any other name ? " 

“ Don’t know of any. They calls me the Prig in 
the Garden, 'cos yer can guess why ! " 

“ You’ll have to stop that on the farm," said Daish 


22 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


promptly. “ The first theft, and off you go. What's 
your age ? " 

“ What yer please. I'm over fourteen or I'd 'ave 
to go to school. Making my own living I am, and 
keepin’ my pore old grannie ! " He winked as if at 
a phantom school inspector. “ They let me off, 'cos 
they jolly well can’t 'elp it—us * vagrants ’ of the road 
is 'ard to cotch ! " 

“ You don’t look more than twelve,” said Daish 
doubtfully, but as the boy stood beside him he judged 
that he might really be fourteen or even fifteen, 
allowing for a frame that had been half-starved, and 
undeveloped bones and muscles. Probably the boy 
did not himself know his real age if, as he said, he had 
been a nameless tramp all his life, and the school 
authorities might be less likely to object if he were 
doing steady work. 

“ If I gave you a trial and trained you as a little 
* lavender lad,' would you work ? ” he asked, half 
ashamed of the kindly impulse that seemed like sheer 
folly in taking in this scum of the London streets or 
the highways. For Daish had few boys at Leith save 
at harvest time. Even the sons of his own labourers went 
to other farms where the work was more usual and would 
give them a better training in stock and agriculture. 

“ I can’t do 'eavy work,” said the boy with un¬ 
expected honesty. “ If yer puts me to light jobs I’ll 
be orl rite, but I’ve 'ad pneumony.” 

“ How long since ? ” 

" I’ve been out of the ’firmary two or three weeks. 
That’s 'ow it is I gets knocked out easy, and grew ser 
tired I went to sleep in yer cart.” 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


23 


“ It's a van—not a cart, laddie. A van has four 
wheels and a cart only two. That’s your first lesson 
as a farm boy. Come along back to the house now, 
and I will see that you have some breakfast and some¬ 
where to sleep.” 

He turned and walked back slowly, past the potato 
patch and over the road, Charley the Prig pattering 
behind him. As they reached the open space between 
the farmhouse and the distillery a great shadow leapt 
up the sunshiny wall, and a dog came out of the open 
doorway of the farm towards his master. His massive 
head and heavy jowl looked decidedly grim, and the 
hackles rose on his back at the sight of the small 
ragged figure at Daish’s heels. The boy stopped 
short and shrank—a fatal sign of cowardice that 
turned the dog’s welcoming bark to an unmistakable 
growl. 

“ Hector ! ” said the farmer sharply. 

The dog stopped, and the growl stopped too ; but 
he did not look any the more friendly. They eyed 
each other, the boy under his mat of smooth black 
hair, and the animal under his wrinkled forehead. 

“ You mustn’t be afraid of him, lad,” said Daish 
a trifle anxiously. “ He looks bad-tempered, but if 
you let him alone he will let you alone. He is a very 
necessary guard here, and he suspects you of being a 
tramp. Once he gets used to the sight of you he will 
let you pass as he does the men.” 

“ I ain’t afraid ! ” said the boy boastfully, but he 
dared not move a step forward and his dark eyes 
regarded Hector with a look that was half suspicion 
and half a mischievous desire to tease. “ Lumme ! 


24 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


he's got a jaw! I'd sooner lose the grub, guv’nor, if 
he’s in the ’ouse ! ” 

“ Don’t take any notice of him, and follow me,” 
said Daish, pushing the great dog on one side on his 
way into the farmhouse. Charley followed closely, 
but as he passed Hector he made a half-jeering motion 
from the safety of the farmer’s protection, to “ get 
some of his own back ” for the humiliation of his 
cowardice. The next instant he was flying past 
Daish and into the porch with a whimper of fear, and 
Hector was straining at his collar as his master caught 
him. John Daish ordered the dog away and followed 
his protege, very angry. 

“Charley,” he said sharply, “if you attempt to 
play tricks with the dog I won’t have you on the farm 
an hour. I can’t be responsible, mind that, and I 
won’t take risks. Do you hear, boy ? The dog could 
have you by the throat in an instant, and I could not 
prevent his mauling you, if nothing worse.” 

Charley looked up at him, still trembling with 
fright but with a certain defiance in his hollow dark 
eyes. 

“ Who yer talkin’ to ? ” he said impertinently. “ I 
ain’t likely to play the goat with yer lap-dog out there, 
after this. He’d be chewin’ of me on the mat in ’alf 
a mo’ ! ” 

Daish bit his lip in the effort not to laugh. The 
boy’s insolence and pluck together were irresistible. 
But he was relieved that Hector had really given him 
a fright if it saved something worse, and did not 
encourage Charley to make friends with the cross-breed. 
It would indeed have been difficult, for the dog took 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


25 


a dislike to the newcomer from that hour, and though 
he did not attack him and allowed him about with the 
men, it was more prudent in Charley to go round by the 
stackyard to reach the lavender fields than to pass 
the distillery if Hector were in the yard. They hated 
the more as they both gave a jealous devotion to 
John Daish, and regarded each other as rivals to his 
favour. 

Charley was fated to make another enemy on his 
first introduction into Leith Farm, for as he followed 
the farmer again into the big tiled kitchen a sharp¬ 
faced woman with a print overall covering her neat 
gown turned from the fire and looked at him with 
scant approval. 

“ Breakfast is just coming in, Mr. Daish. Who's 
boy is that ? " she asked, with a jerk of her thumb 
towards Charley. 

“ A waif and stray from Covent Garden who had 
crept into the van and fell asleep," said Daish quietly. 
“ He wants to learn farm-work-" 

" He wants a good birching from the magistrates, 
more likely," said the woman, very much in the tone 
that Hector might have used if he had been able to 
speak. " Those London ragamuffins are the very 
scum ! We want no Barnado boys at Leith, Mr. John, 
Send him out with the dog at his heels, sir ! " 

“ I have promised him a job," said John Daish 
quietly. “ Will you please see that he has some break¬ 
fast as well as the men who came down with the van, 
Mrs. Skelton, and I will see where he can be billeted." 

The woman’s harsh, elderly face flushed brick-red 
at the order. When John Daish used that tone of 



26 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


authority everyone at Leith knew that he was going 
to be obeyed whether it were a rash experiment or 
no; the old men who had worked for his father had 
heard it when the new machinery was put up in the 
distillery and they shook their heads over its installa¬ 
tion. In the present instance his housekeeper knew 
that the boy must be housed and fed, for the present 
at any rate; but she had been with the Daish family 
ever since John was a lad, and she raised a protest as 
no one else would have done. 

“ There’s none of ’em will want to take him into a 
clean cottage ! Like as not he’s swarming ! ” 

“ I ain’t ! ” said the boy angrily, and losing his 
insouciance for the first time. “ Swarm yerself ! I’ve 
bin kept as clean as those bloomin’ saucepans, in the 
’firmary, and I ain’t got warm with the old London 
crust yet ! ” 

“ Shut up, boy ! " said Daish harshly in the effort 
not to laugh. “ You must speak civilly to Mrs. 
Skelton. Sit down in that corner and have your 
breakfast, while I speak to Somers about you.” 

Charley took himself and his rags—fairly clean 
rags, considering that he was a vagrant and a wanderer 
•—into a distant corner of the speckless kitchen, and 
ate his breakfast in sullen silence. Mrs. Skelton 
slapped a bowl of porridge down on the wooden bench 
on which he sat, and gave him a hunch of bread and 
butter and a cup of sugarless tea to follow. He seemed 
to enjoy the food, which was good and wholesome, but 
he sniffed at the bacon she was frying for her master 
as some dainty cat who leaves off lapping milk to smell 
fish. 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


27 


Mrs. Skelton disliked him as much as Hector 
had done, his vagrant condition and his impudent 
black eyes, and as soon as he had finished his meal she 
turned him out of the house to await John Daish’s 
further orders in the yard. The boy made a face 
behind her gaunt back, just as he had jeered at Hector, 
and sauntering out to the farm buildings with an 
indescribably jaunty air he proceeded to inspect them. 
The barns and the stables seemed to interest him in 
particular, especially the lofts, and when Daish came 
out to speak to Bill Somers about him he had already 
selected his bedroom after his own primitive fancy. 

“ Look 'ere, guv’nor,” he said, pointing to the loft 
above the stalls where Emerald and Ruby were lying 
down like sensible horses after their night's work. 
“ I won’t go with the men—they’d think I was dirty 
like that old girl with the wish-bones in 'er cheeks.” 
(Daish tried not to appreciate the mental sketch of 
his housekeeper’s profile.) “ I ain’t dirty, but their 
wives would scratch like your 'ens if I was round, 
thinkin’ of it. I’ll berth up there’—above the 'orses. 
There's plenty of 'ay. Give me a blanket and I’ll be 
orl rite.” 

John Daish was the more ready to fall in with the 
gipsy instinct because he knew that what Mrs. Skelton 
and the boy said was true—the men would not welcome 
the ragged street Arab in their decent cottages, and 
their wives would suspect dirt and its foul results 
even where none existed. He told the boy he might 
try it, and himself inspected the suggested bedroom, 
insisting on Mrs. Skelton supplying an old blanket 
from the household store, and himself unearthing a 


28 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


tin jug and basin and a hair-brush to complete the 
furnishing. He knew that Charley must have been 
accustomed to the decencies of life while in the infirmary, 
and he hoped that the boy might keep himself clean 
and respectable if given the means. Charley begged, 
borrowed, or stole a piece of soap and a rough towel 
for himself, as Daish discovered with secret satisfac¬ 
tion, and from the day he entered the farm he was 
never billeted on the men, but went his own odd way, 
managing for himself with perfect independence at 
least. 

He ate with the men, but he never slept amongst 
them, and his bath was the little stream that ran just 
beyond the boundaries of Leith farm. At one point 
in its wayward course it broadened out into a wide 
pool beneath overhanging trees, and the spot was 
unpopular because of a ghost-story connected with it* 
But either the tale did not reach Charley's ears for a 
time, or he was indifferent to it, for there he splashed 
about in the crisp mornings, so early that even the 
men only met him returning to breakfast, and none of 
them ever went down to bathe with him. No more 
did the boys who lived in Daish’s cottages with their 
parents, and who were either at school or working on 
other farms round about, for they were not so fond of 
fresh water as the little gipsy, for all his rags and dirt. 
Their wits were slower than his, too, though their 
muscles were harder, and did they encounter he showed 
a facility in resource that gave him the upper hand. 

In a few days he was as f ami bar a figure about 
the farm as any of the men, and as free of the place 
as some mischievous animal might be with amusing 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


29 


monkey tricks. He would not do hard work—not yet, 
at any rate—but if a job pleased him he was very 
quick to learn to do it, and do it skilfully. John 
Daish made gradual discoveries about him that made 
his character and origin still more of a perplexity, but 
by no means lessened the interest he excited ; as, for 
instance, that he knew nothing about horses, and had 
never handled them, though it might be supposed that 
he had had jobs in the great markets of minding them, 
and should have learned still more from his gipsy 
friends. But he was by no means averse to a ride on 
Emerald's or Ruby's broad, patient backs, and at the 
end of a week had associated himself with them foY 
this privilege, and could be trusted to feed or yoke 
them. If the harness were too heavy the men lent a 
hand, and the same with the grooming, which he would 
hardly attempt. His tongue and his temper got him 
his own way with the more good-natured of the farm 
labourers, and he never forgot either a kindness or a 
cruelty. 

It puzzled John Daish in his secret mind that the 
boy should remain at Leith and seem content, for he 
half expected to find that he had gone off tramping 
again some fine morning. His vagrant life must have 
had its own excitements, and been full of change, and 
the gipsy blood that he claimed could ill brook either 
the discipline or the monotony of the work that he 
could not entirely avoid. At times indeed he would 
be sullen, or openly defiant of authority, and came 
nearer than he knew to drastic punishment; but the 
patience that he inculcated with animals Daish felt 
bound to extend to this half-savage, half-ignorant 


30 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


creature that shared many of their instincts, and he 
hoped that the boy might become more humanised 
and more influenced by example than by rough treat¬ 
ment. If he were given time he might make a decent 
working man of the unpromising material in the little 
waif, but he had small hopes that Charley would not 
weary of the life in a very short space. 

There were, however, two factors in the case that he 
had discounted : one was the boy’s odd liking for 
himself, which might develop into devotion—the other 
the attraction of the lavender. Those great fields of 
moving colour, breathing scent with every wind that 
passed, and flushed with every shade of purple-blue, 
w r ere a fascination to the boy of wfliich he never seemed 
to tire. If he shirked work, or w r ere missing, Daish 
began to be pretty sure that he should find him loiter¬ 
ing along the path that edged the cultivation, or in 
the narrow alleyw’avs between the clumps, sniffing the 
perfume like the sybarite that he w r as in some w'ays, 
for Charley the Prig had a dainty appetite and a quick 
sense of luxury, despite his wild origin. Once Daish 
found him actually asleep on the bank that divided 
the mature from the tw r o-year-old plants, his round 
black head supported on his arm v 7 hich was half 
cuddled round the stalks of the swaying purpled flowers. 
He was flushed with sleep, and the black curled lashes 
lay like separate shadow's on the thin cheeks. Wake 
him, and he would be once more the insolent, shrewd, 
ungrammatical, disillusioned arab of the streets; 
but as he lay there, innocently asleep, he might have 
had some pathetic affinity with one of the wood gods, 
divinely dow'ered and only half human. He had few 


THE COMING OF THE BOY 


3i 


of the real attractions of boyhood, but the young 
farmer turned away without disturbing him, and even 
with, a little ache at his heart. Let him lie, and dream 
at least of the beautiful side of life, though he did not 
recognise it when awake 1 


CHAPTER II 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 

" If the weather don’t get better the crop won’t be 
ready for cutting till the middle of August,” said Bill 
Somers, as he rolled his tobacco between big, soiled 
fingers. “ And the mint’ll be in the coppers first! ” 
The oldest lavender man on the farm, who had 
worked for Daish’s father, looked up and snorted. 
“ The mint’s got the snuff with the rain,” he said. “ If 
Master John’s wise he’ll cut now, and not wait for it 
to come to full growth, or for the lavender either.” 

“ July’s early for the mint,” said another man 
dubiously. “ When did you reckon to harvest lavender 
in the old man’s day, David ? ” 

" First week in August, and never a day earlier,” 
said David sententiously. “ The seasons were not 
so rackety then. We could calc’late on the crops 
almost to the day. But Lord ! now it’s like every¬ 
thing else. Seems as if summer were on strike, and 
not knowin’ what she wanted ! ” 

He looked soberly over the long reach of the country 
that rolled downhill to the soft woody hollows of 
Surrey, and up again to Leith Hill in the far distance. 
The foreground was blue-grey with the lavender, 
which was losing the first gaiety of its blue flowers and 

3 * 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


33 


beginning to swell in the seeds, rich with the oil which 
supplies the scent ; but there was a drizzle of rain 
falling and the lavender fields faded into an ominous 
mist. The men were grouped in one of the long 
buildings round the stackyard, eating an eleven o’clock 
lunch of bread and cheese, for they had been at work 
on the farm since five, and John Daish was a just man 
to the labour he employed and fed both his men and 
his cattle well. Behind the group of farm hands stood 
the empty van in which the lavender and other crops 
went to market, and perched up in the driver’s seat 
was the boy Charley, munching his share of the lunch 
and looking with observant dark eyes from one face 
to the other. 

“ Well, anyhow, we’ll send no more of the crop to the 
Garden this year,” he announced, with the air of a 
proprietor in the cultivation. “ The big clumps are 
nearly ripe.” 

“ Hulloa, young shaver ! you know a lot, don’t 
you ? ” said Jonah the teamster, with faint ridicule. 
“ Where did they learn you that ? In Covent Garden ? ” 

” Naw—I’ve kep’ my eyes open since I’ve bin on 
this little ’lotment, and that’s more’n you can do even 
with your missus to prop ’em up, Jonah Wickham,” 
said the boy with a hot flush in his thin face. He was 
tart of his tongue at the first attack, and venomous 
in his retorts when roused. 

The men, instead of cuffing him, all laughed, for 
Jonah’s habit of sleeping off the night’s beer next 
morning was notorious, and his wife’s efforts to rouse 
him lest he should be late at roll-call. 

“ You’re a smarty ! ” said one of the younger men 

c 


34 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


half admiringly. “ Tell us, now, what was your job 
in Covent Garden ? Loadin’ or horse-keep ? ” 

“ I was a gleaner,” said Charley solemnly, with an 
indescribable contraction of his left eye. “ Know 
what that is, Joe ? Well, I’ll tell yer. Abart twelve 
o’clock the dear little children comes out o’ school, 
and then they runs through the Garden and gleans for 
themselves. I was a gleaner, too, though they couldn’t 
cotch me for school. Lord lumme ! some o’ them shop 
chaps didn’t dare leave their open fronts when I was 
by, not ’alf ! ” 

“ What’s gleanin’ ? ” asked one of the more stolid 
hands, staring up at the excitable face and the black 
eyes, so vivid in contrast to the heavy yokel type 
prevalent amongst the men. 

“ You mean priggin’, I suppose,” grunted old David 
disapprovingly. 

“ I’m ashamed of you, Mr. David ! ” said the boy 
with mock resentment. “ Priggin’, indeed! We 
gleaned! You carries a needle and a long thread 
inside yer jacket, and when yer gets near a nice pile 
o' tomatoes yer slips the needle through the skin o' 
one o’ them and draws it out as nice as can be without 
touching a fruit. I don’t 'old with snatching”—he 
shook his head virtuously—“ unless you can get 
clean away. The gals mostly works in Leaden’all. 
They 'as a bag, and strips the fat off the butchers’ 
meat as they passes.” 

“ Wot for ? To make puddings of ? ” asked a dozen 
voices. 

" Puddin’s! Not much. They sells it to the 
factories. A smart gal will make a tidy sum gleanin, 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 35 

fat. I was a fust-class gleaner, I was—there was 
nothin' to touch me in Bow Street." 

There was a sudden stir amongst his listeners, and 
the boy was instantly aware that he had lost the 
interest of his audience. Turning round his black head 
to see, he caught sight of a tall figure in overalls and 
mackintosh, and realised that Daish had come into 
the building to speak to old David in passing. In a 
second the boy had swung himself down from the 
van, and slipped through the group of men, reaching 
the farmer’s side as if drawn by habit. He stood there 
apparently unnoticed, until Daish had finished his 
conversation, when the farmer turned on his heel, 
speaking over his shoulder as if to his dog. 

** I want you, Charley." 

The boy turned also, with the jaunty air of a little 
soldier, and followed his master. Despite his prompt 
obedience, there was something of a mock daring in 
his movement that brought a sheepish smile to the 
men’s faces. If Daish knew it he took no notice, but 
walked out through the unpleasant rain across the 
stackyard and over to the distillery, glancing down at 
the round black head at his side as he did so. Charley 
never wore a cap, his thick mop of hair being good 
enough protection from sun or bad weather. 

“ Was that true that you were telling the men ? 
That you were a Covent Garden thief ? " 

The boy shuffled along uneasily at the tall man’s 
side, looking up under his curled lashes with stealthy 
distrust. 

“ Some of it were," he muttered. “ P'r’aps I made 
a bit of a yarn of it-—but I told yer they called me the 


3 ^ 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Prig, guv’nor ! ” There was reproach as well as self- 
defence in the tone. 

“ Have you ever been in the hands of the police ? ” 

“ Not for priggin’. I’ve bin took up for wandering 
twice/’ 

“ You slept out ? ” 

“ Lord lumme, there ain’t no chanst to sleep in the 
Garden since the regulations ! Yer may get overlooked 
at Leadenhall or the Fish Market, but the best lay is 
a roof up an alley.” 

“ Don’t tell me lies, boy, and think it’s funny,” 
said the farmer almost harshly. “ You are not 
showing off before the men now. How could you sleep 
on a roof ? How would you get there ? ” 

“ Climb ! ” said Charley, with a snap of his black 
eyes. “ I don’t mean the roof of a great ’ouse, but a 
shed or some low shanty. ’Eaps round the slum 
quarters. Yer climbs up there and lays out on the tiles, 
and the coppers never cotches yer. ’Tain’t ser bad 
this time of year, but in the winter it’s crool! ” 

John Daish’s face had softened from its frowning 
suspicion to something like remorse. The boy was 
so slight, and still so thin in spite of the wholesome food, 
that the picture of him picking up a scanty living by 
“gleaning” in the great markets and sleeping out on 
the roofs of sheds gave the big man a shamed heart¬ 
ache. He was no coddler of humanity, and thought 
the better of men for roughing it ; but no farm-hand 
at Leith had undergone the severe training that Charley 
accepted with supreme nonchalance. 

“ Have you had any schooling, boy ? ” he asked 
abruptly. 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


37 


“ Had to, when the eddication blokes caught me. 
But I've bin on the tramp so much they don’t get me 
often. I kin read and write and I like figures." 

“If I lent you books would you read ? " 

“ I’d sooner have a paper, guv’nor, with pictures in 
it." 

Again Daish felt as if he had received a douche of 
cold water. The boy was always disappointing him 
in this way, after some glimpse of what seemed a finer 
nature. His love for the lavender, his quickness in 
making himself popular with people, which almost 
amounted to sensitiveness, even his monkey tricks, 
raised him above the level of the mere yokel; but 
on the other hand he was the veriest little Goth in all 
things spiritual or intellectual, which appealed to his 
master to an unrecorded extent. Hector, growling at 
them from the distillery doorway, had as much or more 
artistic sense. 

John Daish was himself a practical man and a 
capable farmer, but by nature he was a student, and 
an idealist. His father had run the farm on more 
general lines than the son was doing, and had prospered 
so that he was able to send John to a good school and 
was not bound to make him a farmer also. He was 
ambitious for his son according to his lights, the goal 
which he set before him being that he should become 
a rich man. To this end the boy was put into the 
offices of Messrs. Denman, the greatest agricultural 
implement makers in England; and the heads of the 
firm being old Daish’s personal friends, it was reason¬ 
able to suppose that young Daish would be put into 
a position of trust very soon if he had any suitability 


38 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


in him. Mr. Denman had no son of his own to push 
in the business, and was ready to take a personal 
interest in Johns career. 

But young John had left school with the one burning 
desire to go to college and study for study’s sake, 
regardless of material success. He was bitten by the craze 
To Know, and his heart was full of art and science and 
abstract ‘ ologies ’ that had nothing to do with money¬ 
making. He endured the office stool for six months, 
and then he flatly refused to go on at Messrs. Denman’s, 
with a strain of obstinacy that may have come from 
his yeoman forefathers. If it were a choice between 
that and the farm, he would rather be a farmer; and 
his father’s grim mouth warned him that it would be 
no fancy vocation either. He came back to Leith 
and was taught his work by practical experience, work¬ 
ing with his men, up at dawn and before it, to bed by 
sunset, dog tired, and with no time for the study for 
which his soul hungered. He became a farmer from 
stress of circumstances, and when his father died he 
took over the farm as a matter of course and was his 
own master, his mother having died many years before 
and he being the only child of the marriage. He made 
one difference at Leith, but that was an essential one. 
His father had grown a small crop of lavender and 
peppermint as an experiment for some years before 
his death, but the larger part of his land was under crops 
and pasture. John Daish the younger increased the 
lavender until it absorbed all the land suitable for its 
cultivation, with a lesser area devoted to pepper¬ 
mint. There was enough pasture left for the cattle 
and to lay up hay, and if the experiment was a costly 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 39 

one at first it had paid by steady increase since the 
setting up of the new plant in the distillery. 

Both the peppermint and the lavender were valuable 
crops, particularly in a favourable year, but the 
lavender was the more valuable. John Daish was 
respected in the neighbourhood as long-headed for a 
youngish man, though his neighbours had said he was 
a fool when he first began to change the old traditions 
of Leith, and to use most of the old arable land for 
his new fad. It is eminently characteristic of the 
English farmer that he looks askance on any innovation 
in his profession, and is even more insular than 
other masters of industry; but once he recognises 
the material gain from patient labour he will attri¬ 
bute a kind of cunning to the innovator. Daish was 
spoken of as shrewd, a longheaded ’un, a man with a 
nose for money ; the truth being that he hardly deserved 
even the commendation of being a practical farmer. 
His success was the result of intense interest in his 
speculation, rather from the scientist's point of vew 
than that of the agriculturist, and a secret craving 
for an outlet for the old abandoned dreams. He wanted 
beauty—the beauty of scent and colour—instead of 
the prosaic skinning of earth and Nature that make up 
the ordinary farmer’s life. It was an instinct of self- 
preservation that made him pull down his pigstyes 
and clothe the softly swelling slopes with waving 
purples over which the bees hung and droned in a 
delirium of bliss. But his little world saw only the 
price of the oil from the great coppers, and justified 
him for his folly as a wise man. 

He had never found a living soul who gloated over 


40 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


the lavender as he did until the coming of the boy 
Charley with his gipsy face and black eyes. A half- 
shamed purpose of taking and training the boy as his 
own son began to lurk at the very back of John Daish’s 
most secret mind. He was thirty-eight, and unmarried, 
nor had maid, wife, or widow ever been the worse for 
him, for all his strong manhood. Some strain of the 
Puritan lingered in the Daish family, and set up a 
standard before them for womanhood that made John 
as fastidious as any great gentleman w r hose wife must 
be without stain or reproach—more so, indeed, than 
many. He demanded impossible virtues from the 
exuberant blood in the lusty veins of the rustic com¬ 
munity round him, and red cheeks and moist lips left 
him indifferent. There was only one woman whose 
name had ever been coupled with his own, and that 
was his cousin’s, Lillias Daish; but they had been 
as brother and sister, and far more like to each other 
than many brothers and sisters. They were both 
Daishs in temperament, and looked with calm, dis¬ 
passionate eyes upon the gossips who nodded and 
grinned in anticipation of a marriage that had never 
come off. John Daish, in his heart, would have liked 
a child, but he shrank from the necessary medium 
of a wife. When other men’s children clung to his 
hands or tumbled about his feet, his heart ached for 
his lost fatherhood, but it had not driven him into 
taking a wife. He had never even thought of adoption 
until the waif of Covent Garden drifted into his life, 
but there was something in the boy’s very wildness 
and untamed revolt at the humdrum of steady work 
that appealed to him. For he also might have been a 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


4 i 

rebel, had not necessity and tradition yoked him to 
the harrow. 

Charley’s outspoken aversion to books was dis¬ 
couraging ; but the “ paper with pictures in it ” put 
Daish on a new track with regard to him. He had 
called the boy away from the men to set him to work 
in stacking some wood, the secret purpose in his mind 
being to keep him under cover this wet day after his 
recent attack of pneumonia. He was uneasily con¬ 
scious that he often now planned to shelter the boy’s 
slight and shivering body when he would have sent 
a stouter urchin out into all weathers to harden him, 
Daish hardly knew what had come to himself, and had 
a shamed fear that he should get the reputation of 
" coddling ” his protege, but as he glanced down at 
the thin little frame a great pity surged up in his big 
heart, and he felt as he did when the young calves 
had to be taken from their mothers and he shunned 
meeting the cows’ piteous eyes. Sentimentality in 
a farmer was ludicrous, but he was secretly 
thankful that there was so little stock now at 
Leith. 

Instead of sending Charley direct to the wood-shed, 
however, he took him into the house and to the parlour, 
which was his one living-room, his pulse beating a 
little quicker at the idea of a new experiment. The 
boy came reluctantly. He was rarely allowed in the 
house if Mrs. Skelton were about, and as he returned 
her aversion with a good honest hatred he was quite 
willing to keep away. Daish himself was guiltily 
conscious of relief that his housekeeper was busy in 
the kitchen, and hoped that she would not hear them. 


42 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


He dreaded the shrewd hard eyes that condemned his 
favouritism, more than any of the men's. 

“ Come in here, Charley," he said, opening the 
sitting-room door. “ Eve got some old papers you 
may have if you like." 

As it happened the boy had never been further than 
the kitchen before, and he stood sheepishly in the 
doorway of the inner room as if a little afraid. It was 
a pleasant room, though unpretentious. The fire¬ 
place was an open hearth, and in winter John Daish 
thought that it was even cosier than in summer, with 
its crackling logs. The walls were panelled—not, alas ! 
with oak, but with a good dark pine—and there was 
a solid centre table polished by much rubbing, and 
deep, shabby armchairs. It was just a comfortable 
farmhouse parlour with a window-seat in the square 
bay overlooking an old-fashioned garden. The only 
things of artistic merit were the water-colours on the 
walls, but it was to these that the farmer trusted for 
his experiment, and he glanced covertly from the boy 
to the pictures as he carelessly pulled a pile of old 
Graphics out of a corner and threw them on the table. 

“ There ! " he said. “ You can have some of those 
if you like." 

But Charley was no longer at his side. His eyes 
had been caught, as John Daish hardly dared to hope, 
by the pictures on the old dark walls, and as if drawn 
by them he had drifted across the room and was 
glancing with eager eyes from one to another. 

“ Who did these ? " he asked with that subtle 
change in his voice that John had first noticed when 
he saw the lavender. 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


43 


“ Oh, a painter fellow who stayed here one summer, 
and couldn’t pay for his board. He left me the pictures 
instead. Do you like them, Charley ? ” asked Daish 
softly, almost afraid to speak and drive that rapt look 
from the black eyes as the boy stood absorbed before 
a sketch of the slopes below the farm with their summer 
harvest of joyous blue. 

The boy gave a little choking cough, as if something 
took his breath away. “ It’s the lavender itself ! ” he 
said. 

It was indeed. The artist had caught the very blue 
of it, and had flung it on the canvas in all the glory of 
its rich bloom. It was only a small drawing, but the 
boy had been right in going to it before the others, 
good though they were. He stood entranced, his thin 
lips a little parted and his eyes wild with a feeling 
which he did not seem to know how to express—the 
little “ gleaner ” of Co vent Garden, who boasted his 
skill as a thief, and was known as Charley the Prig by 
his own confession ! 

“ I wish I could do that—make a picture of it so 
that I could take it away with me ! ” he said below 
his breath, and a pang went through John Daish’s heart 
at the unconscious betrayal. 

“ Why do you want to take it away with you, lad ? Are 
you going on the tramp again ? ” he asked suspiciously. 

Charley’s eyes narrowed to something of their old 
cunning, and he glanced at John with the expression 
of a wild animal in fear of the trap. 

“ I’m going to see the crop in,” he said cautiously. 
" S’pose I shall get out on the road again some day, 
though.” 


44 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ Are you not happy here ? You are getting on 
all right with the men/' 

Charley grinned, showing all his little white teeth. 
The effect of the pictures seemed to be passing off 
him, and he spoke in the old manner. “ I can make 
'em larf—that’s why they likes me. I gets on all 
right. Don't you bother, guv'nor." His eyes wan¬ 
dered back to the walls and he looked half hungrily 
from one picture to another, always returning, how¬ 
ever, to the lavender. 

“ Where's that ? " He had paused before another 
sketch. 

“ Leith Common. Have you been up there 
yet ? ” 

“ No. Better than 'Ampstead 'Eath or Wansted 
Flats, ain’t it ? That’s a bit of the farm-" 

“ Yes, down by your favourite bathing stream." 

“ I know. I see it like that most mornings. I like 
the lavender best, though." 

“ Can you draw, Charley ? " 

“ Never tried." 

“ You seem very fond of pictures." 

“ I’m very fond of apple tart, but I can’t make it 
like the Skeleton ! " said the boy coolly, and Daish 
had a momentary impulse to shake him like a rat for 
his perversion of Mrs. Skelton’s name and hisimpudence. 
Only the memory of that strange, inspired look on his 
face saved Charley from merited punishment this 
time. 

“ Take your papers and go," said Daish curtly. 
“ And remember not to speak of Mrs. Skelton like 
that to me again. I won’t have it." 



JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


45 


The boy looked up at the angry beauty of the man’s 
face as if a little abashed for once, and slunk towards 
the door. 

“ Sorry, guv’nor ! ” he said, but offered no further 
apology. 

The fascination of the pictures unfortunately re¬ 
mained with him. He wanted to examine them for 
himself ; and perhaps some other attraction in the 
civilised parlour drew him from his rough outdoor 
life to visit it again, though uninvited. It was easy 
enough to get into the house, since its open doors and 
windows all stood wide in summer, so long as the house¬ 
keeper did not catch him, and he trusted to his catlike 
quickness to avoid her and Hector. John Daish he 
did not fear, though he stopped short at asking if he 
might look at the water-colours again. For reasons 
of his own it was easier to take “ French leave,” and 
slip in through the garden or by the front door; nor 
did anyone ever know how often he had been in the 
house, or that he was there at all until the unlucky day 
when Mrs. Skelton came in to lay her master’s tea 
earlier than usual and caught sight of a ragged figure 
standing in rapt silence before the little sketch of the 
lavender fields, which Charley had taken down from 
the wall and held in his hands, drinking it in with a 
new soul in his black eyes. . . . 

The first Charley knew of the housekeeper’s presence 
was the picture snatched from his hands arid a sting¬ 
ing box on the ear that knocked him sideways across 
the room in the direction of the window. It was open, 
and, half dazed, but with the instinct to escape, he 
flung himself over the sill and doubled across the garden. 


46 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


leaving Mrs. Skelton to meet her master with a flaming 
face as he came in to his tea. 

“ D’you know what I've just found, sir ? That 
blasted boy, standing in the parlour as bold as brass, 
looking at everything, and helping himself, no doubt! 
He’d got one of your pictures in his very hands ”— 
she thrust the drawing of the lavender fields at John 
as proof of her words, convincing him, however, of some¬ 
thing very different to what she intended. “ I soon 
sent him off with a flea in his ear ! But we shall have 
to look sharply after things to see what he has taken. 
That’s what comes of this petting and encouraging 
beggars from the streets ! ” 

John Daish was tired, for he had been out since a 
very early hour, and had hardly come back to the 
farm until now, even for meals. He was worried, too, 
about the peppermint, which certainly showed signs 
of snuff, and his housekeeper’s tirade was the last 
straw. He turned upon her with a sharpness bereft 
of his usual patience. 

“ If you mean Charley, I took the boy into the 
parlour one day myself to show him something. He 
may have thought he had permission to come there 
in search of me.” 

“ In search of something to put in his pocket or 
his stomach more likely, Master John! Don’t tell 
me. The men call him Prigging Charley, and with 
reason, too. Now I know where the eggs have gone 
lately, and half a crown that was lying on this very 
table from the washerwoman. I wish you’d hand 
him over to the police and have done with it.” 

“ I found the half-crown myself, down amongst 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


47 


some things in the table drawer/’ said John curtly. 
“ Don’t talk nonsense, Mrs. Skelton, and don’t accuse 
anybody on this farm without more proof than your 
own prejudice.” 

I'll find proof soon enough ! It’s only to watch 
him. Eggs has gone, and I’ve fancied the milk was 
stolen. Like enough, with a thief about the place, 
encouraged to help himself! ”—Mrs. Skelton’s temper 
was rising with her colour, and she banged the cups 
on the table as a vent to it. “ I gave him something 
he’ll remember, at any rate ! ” 

John Daish astonished the angry woman by taking 
her firmly by the shoulders and putting her straight 
out of the room with scant ceremonv. 

“ I want no more of this kind of thing,” he said 
sternly. “ I decline to listen to tales, and you must 
learn to keep a civil tongue and to treat the work¬ 
people properly. Go back to your kitchen. I will 
see after the little lad.” 

He shut the door of the parlour on the raging woman 
but before he sat down to his tea he hesitated and 
glanced through the open window. Where had the 
boy gone, and had the housekeeper’s rough treat¬ 
ment driven him away ?—Nonsense ! the boy must 
take his chance. John sat down to the table and 
poured out a cup of tea, which he drank thirstily ; but 
it was no use—he could not settle comfortably to his 
food until he got at the rights of the case. He pushed 
back his chair, and vaulting over the window-seat 
as easily as Charley had done, he walked down the 
garden looking for the boy. Charley was not there, 
but an open door in the high wall suggested that he 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


48 

had made his escape into the farmyard, and Daish 
followed, carefully closing the door which was supposed 
to be bolted—another grudge against Charley if Mrs. 
Skelton saw that it was not. 

There was no sign of the truant in any of his usual 
haunts. Hector lay as if on guard at the distillery 
door, and wagged his sinewy tail at the sight of his 
master, rising courteously to greet him. But with one 
cursory glance round the shadowy old barn,Daish turned 
away from the entrance, stooping in spite of his hurry 
to fondle the big head at his knee and bidding the 
dog “ Lie down ! ” before he continued his search. 
The men had gone to their own tea, and there was no 
one in the stables save the great cart-horses who turned 
their heads to look at the farmer with eyes which an 
Eastern beauty might have envied. Daish climbed 
up to the loft where Charley slept, ashamed of his own 
eager anxiety. Not there. He crossed the stack¬ 
yard and made his way to the lavender fields, but the 
boy was not lying asleep to-day, or cuddled down be¬ 
tween the sweet ranks of flowers with his black eyes 
on some distant prospect of the Open Road that he 
had tramped so often. It was not till John Daish had 
reached the gate that shut his own property from the 
public road that he caught sight of a small lean figure 
stealing by under the hedgerow, towards Leith Com¬ 
mon. The boy had no bundle in his hand, for he 
owned nothing but what had been bestowed on him at 
the farm ; nevertheless Daish knew at once that he 
was running away, and going back to his vagrant life. 

He opened the gate and stepped into the road, 
striding off in pursuit. The boy did not turn his 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


49 


head, but he suddenly slipped through a gap in the 
hedge and disappeared as swiftly as any wild animal 
that knows it is pursued. Daish followed, and looked 
up and down the empty field before he found his 
quarry crouched almost at his feet by the trunk of a 
giant tree that had been felled for timber. 

“ Charley ! ” he said quietly. “ Where are you off 
to? ” 

He never forgot the face that the boy turned to him. 
It was livid with rage, save for a portion of his right 
cheek and ear which were still scarlet with Mrs. 
Skelton’s blow, and in the dark eyes smouldered a 
hate that might have been murderous in less civilised 
countries. 

“ I've done with Leith,” he said in a choked voice, 
but with his better accent. “ That hag struck me and 
called me a thief. I’m off again.” 

“ What were you doing in my room ? ” said Daish, 
still quietly. “ You know none of the men are allowed 
in there.” 

The black eyes still burned in the white face with 
that dreadful scar. 

“ I wanted to see the pictures,” he said defiantly. 
“ And—and where you sat when you weren’t out 
with us.” 

“ Why didn’t you ask me, Charley ? ” 

For the first time the boy’s eyes wavered and fell. 
“ Dunno,” he said sullenly. “ It was easier to get 
in.” 

“ But we can’t have you breaking rules at Leith, my 
boy, and Mrs. Skelton was quite right in turning you 

out—though she did it in the wrong way. Will you 

D 


5o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


give me your word that you haven't been * prigging' 
again, either in the house or the larder ? " 

“ I never took nothing of yours, guv’nor," said 
Charley emphatically. “ What did that old Skeleton 
say I prigged ? " 

“ Mrs. Skelton," corrected Daish with unheard-ot 
patience. But the boy was too angry still to be 
corrected more sharply, as he saw. “ They say that 
eggs have been missing of late." 

“ She’d better keep her dairy windows latched ! " 
said Charley significantly. “ I know who takes the 
eggs. Shan't blab on him, neither. He's a friend o’ 
mine." A faint softening that was not quite a smile 
made his bitten lips quiver. 

“ If I tell Mrs. Skelton that I know it is not you. 
and that I am keeping you on, will you come back 
quietly and keep out of her way ? I should like to 
give you another chance, and—I will show you the 
pictures again some day." 

The boy hesitated, his chest still heaving under 
the ragged shirt. The backwash of his passion swayed 
him yet, but he glanced up at Daish beneath his frown¬ 
ing brows. 

“ I want you to stay, Charley! " said Daish sud¬ 
denly. “ I should be sorry to lose my lavender lad 
before he knows his work." 

The boy gave a kind of gulp in his throat, as he 
crouched beside the big man sitting so patiently on 
the fallen tree. They were a strange couple, and 
John Daish felt it—felt still more the incredible fact 
that he, Daish of Leith, should be pleading with this 
ragged, undesirable waif to stay on the farm ! And 


JOHN DAISH OF LEITH 


5i 


yet he felt he could not lose the new interest in his 
life, the queer, attractive, savage creature that was 
looking at him with wild, wistful eyes. 

“ I’ll stay, guv’nor ! ” said Charley briefly, and the 
farmer rose to his feet with a breath of relief. 

“ Get back to the farm across the fields, boy,” he 
said half shamefacedly. “ I’m going by the road. 
And don’t forget your promise.” 

He expected trouble with his housekeeper when she 
learned that Charley was not to be driven from Leith 
even by her righteous indignation ; but the worst of 
her accusations—that of pilfering—John Daish was 
able to disprove in a day or so, to his own relief. 
Charley’s hint about the dairy window caused his 
master to keep an eye on the place at odd moments, 
and one quiet noontide when there was no one about 
he caught the thief. 

The dairy looked upon the small orchard belonging 
to the farmhouse, and in this enclosure there were 
generally some fowls and the farm pony who was 
turned out to grass there. Jerry was old and knowing, 
and the teamsters declared that he could open any 
gate that was merely latched. But John Daish had 
not realised how partial horses are to eggs until he 
saw the pony come quietly up to the dairy and, pushing 
his nose against a casement window, work at the 
fastening with his teeth until he got it open wide enough 
to thrust in his shaggy head. The farmer was stand¬ 
ing motionless at the further end of the cool, shady 
place to watch, nor did he move when the old pony 
picked up an egg from the basket within his reach, as 
cleverly as any monkey could have done, and crunched 


52 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


it up, shell and all, liclang his lips after the dainty. 
He was still at his deprivations when Daish slipped 
away to fetch the housekeeper to see, but though 
she wrathfully drove him away with John’s driving 
whip, and promised to have a new catch put on the 
window, she was not to be convinced as her master 
demanded. 

“ Horses may be rogues—but that doesn’t prove 
that boys isn’t,” she said viciously. “ You mark my 
words, Master John—it was an ill day for you that you 
brought that guttersnipe to Leith ! ” 

It sounded as ominous as a curse. 


s 


CHAPTER III 


LAVENDER HARVEST 

The bees hummed angrily in the haze of the morning, 
and the white butterflies fluttered in helpless dis¬ 
turbance, for the lavender was all falling at last. 

A good many bunches had been cut for the London 
market, and indeed the younger plants might be cut 
still throughout the summer for sale to the public, for 
those of one, two, and even three years' growth did 
not blossom so soon as the five years. But this was 
lavender harvest , when the ripe crop was cut for the 
distilling of the oil. 

Between the long rows of the ripened plants stood 
the cutters, using their toothed sickles in rhythmical 
monotony, and as the lavender fell it was laid on the 
shorn roots, from which other men picked it up and 
laid it in the archangel mats which were secured by 
skewers. If it was not required in the distillery 
immediately, it was left on the field to “ harvest ” for 
some days in order to lighten it; but John Daish had 
decided not to trust the weather, and the waggon was 
being loaded as fast as the mats were full. The 
cutting alone would take some days of unceasing 
labour, and then the distilling began and did not stop 
day or night until all the oil was extracted, save for 


54 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


the week-end rest. John Daish would not ask his 
men to work on Sunday, even during the distilling. 

The field behind the cutters began to look forlorn, 
shorn of the beauty of its ripened heads. Nothing 
was left save the short stumps of the plants, and now 
the lanes between the rows of the crop could be plainly 
seen. They were just wide enough for the men to move 
down them easily, but while the plants were in full 
flower and beauty the branching sprays had almost 
hidden the narrow paths, so that the field looked as 
evenly grown as a field of wheat. 

Amongst the men filling the mats and loading up 
the van, hovered the boy Charley with eager eyes. He 
was not promoted to a lavender sickle or allowed to 
try his hand at cutting, but he was quick and deft 
at any work that his strength would allow, and he 
was here, there, and everywhere if the men with the 
mats, or the loaders, wanted a hand. It was Daish's 
own decision that he was not to attempt the cutting 
as yet, under the plea that he would but hinder the 
work, and the men had as much as they could do to get 
the harvest reaped while the weather was favourable, 
but really from a secret fear that he might injure 
himself with the notched sickles in his eagerness. A 
slower and duller-brained boy might at least have 
been trusted to do himself no injury; but Charley 
was like quicksilver, and in too great a hurry rather 
than too slow. There were no other lads allowed on 
the lavender fields either, though they were employed 
for the mint. 

“ I'll give you a lesson myself one day, lad/’ said 
Daish kindly, as the boy hovered beside him, watching 


LAVENDER HARVEST 


55 

his trained movements with those black, impatient 
eyes. “ When the work is nearly through/' 

" I want to learn now,” muttered the boy rebelliously 
under his breath. “ I may not be here another harvest, 
guv’nor ! ” 

Daish was not listening. One of the farm girls 
who helped Mrs. Skelton in the dairy had come to the 
gate with a message for the master, and John dropped 
his sickle and went across the field to receive it. He 
stood there for a minute, evidently impatient at the 
interruption, and then reluctantly followed the girl 
back to the house to interview his landlord’s agent 
who had ridden over to the farm. 

Charley edged nearer to the farmer’s deserted post, 
and his eyes, as though fascinated, fell on the long knife, 
curved like a sickle. The next man had his back to him 
as he bent at the work, and was at some little distance, 
for Daish was a quick cutter and soon covered the 
space between him and his men. Charley cast one 
glance at his master’s big figure vanishing across the 
potato patch, and then stooping quickly picked up the 
sickle. He had seen how the men held the bunches, 
and he was a born mimic. The first attempt, which 
he made cautiously, was fairly successful, and he laid 
the sheaf down on the roots before he seized a second. 
His dark brows contracted, but he had cut his first 
sheaf, and he was eager to go on and prove that he 
could do all portions of the work. Another and 
another clump fell to the knife, each sheaf being more 
successfully reaped ; but his hands and arms began to 
feel the strain, and he was less cautious in wielding his 
sickle. After half a dozen clumps there came a sudden 


56 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


cry that startled the other reapers, and the boy stag¬ 
gered, clasping his arm, from which a red gash was 
staining his coarse shirt. 

Ten minutes later John Daish returned to his work 
to find the field in disorder. A group of his men had 
laid down their sickles, not sorry for an excuse to idle, 
and were gathered round Somers who was holding up 
something white and bloodstained in his arms. 

“ It's that boy, sir—Charley—cut himself with a 
sickle ! ” explained a man on the outskirts of the group. 

“ Charley !—but I gave orders that he was not to 
do the cutting ! ” said Daish sternly. “ What has 
happened, Somers ? Go back to your work, men—we 
can’t afford to waste time. I will see to this.” 

“ It’s his arm, sir—I can’t stop the bleeding,” said 
Somers, evidently scared. 

Daish had seen accidents before when novices were 
learning to use the lavender sickles, and his knowledge 
told him that the injury was only a flesh wound. But 
the boy looked white and sick, and was as frightened 
as Somers by the flowing blood and the sharp pain, for 
he shrank childishly when Daish made a bandage of 
his own large handkerchief and, pressing the gaping 
edges together, bound up the wound. 

“ Shall I have to see a doctor ? ” he gasped with an 
evident panic that surprised the farmer until he 
remembered the gipsy’s suspicion of medical skill. 

“ No,” he said shortly. “ Not if you are brave 
enough to let Mrs. Skelton wash and dress it.” 

Charley’s white face twitched, but the mouth 
hardened. “ I don’t want her to touch me ! ” he 
muttered. “ Can’t you do it for me, guv’nor ? ” 



LAVENDER HARVEST 


57 


The coolness of the request made Daish almost smile, 
but he owned to himself that it was due to his own 
indulgence that the boy should take advantage. 

“ I daresay I could—but you’ve only got what you 
deserve for disobeying orders, Charley,” he said. 
“ And I don’t feel inclined to waste my time when I'm 
busy with the crop.” 

He saw the thin little frame brace itself, and the 
boy made a desperate effort to overcome his faintness. 

“ All right, guv’nor—you put it across me proper,” 
he said simply. “ But I’d rather leave it as it is—I 
don’t want no woman messing it about.” 

He turned as if to go off to his own quarters in the 
stables, being useless for further work, but as he 
turned he reeled a little and the farmer caught him. 

“ Come, Charley, you can’t walk—I’ll take you over 
to your loft and you must lie down a bit. Don’t let 
that arm hang—keep it up as if it were in a sling.” 

Two of the men came at once and offered to carry 
the boy over to the stables, their readiness being a 
tribute to his popularity. But Daish shook his head 
and told them to go on with the reaping—he could not 
have their time wasted—while he himself lifted the 
slight figure in his arms and walked past the potato 
patch to the farm buildings. It was not far, but had 
it been farther it would hardly have been a strain on 
his big frame and muscles, the burden was so pitifully 
light. He thought how wasted such waifs as Charley 
must be, if even at fourteen he was as easy to carry 
as a child of eight. There was something very wrong 
in a social order that produced such meagre frames 
for future manhood. 


5» 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Once or twice he thought the boy had fainted, but 
glancing down he saw that his patient was making a 
superhuman effort to retain his consciousness, and 
when they reached the stable he climbed up to the 
loft without the help of his master and lay down on 
the hay. Daish was half pleased to see the plucky 
effort, half afraid of a reaction. 

“ Will you lie here while I go to the house and get 
some proper bandaging? ” he said anxiously. ‘'I’ve 
got plenty of surgical stuff if you would really rather 
that I dressed it for you.” 

“ Please, guv’nor! ” The voice was rather un¬ 
steady, but the boy bit his lips and was evidently 
braving it out after his first shock. 

John Daish went over to the farmhouse and got the 
appliances he wanted, without telling his housekeeper 
of the accident. He had learnt a rough surgery for 
slight accidents on the farm, the nearest doctor being 
some miles away and Leith owning neither telephone 
nor motor-car. When he returned to Charley he 
brought brandy with him as well as the means of 
washing and dressing the wound, and watched the 
blood come back to the livid lips with an unacknow¬ 
ledged relief before he proceeded to bandage the arm 
more scientifically, showing Charley how to keep it 
in an improvised sling. 

There was no doubt that his patient hated pain, 
though he did not utter a sound while the wound was 
washed and bound. It was not necessary, fortunately, 
to stitch it up. But Daish felt the shudder that went 
through his limbs, and wondered if there were another 
creature on his farm that had such sensitive nerves. 


LAVENDER HARVEST 59 

The boy had to pay for the odd, artistic strain in him, 
by added suffering. 

“ Now you’ll lie still for the time being, and give 
yourself a chance,” he said authoritatively. “ No 
climbing up or down to see what's going on, mind ! 
Feel sick ? ” 

He asked the question sharply in some surprise, for 
Charley had turned his face away with a quiver of 
the lips and two great tears hanging on his thick lashes. 
At no time could the little Arab be called a pretty boy, 
but his starved face and gipsy eyes were extraordinarily 
pathetic with the grace of tears upon them. 

“ No, but I—I wanted to see the crop harvested ! ” 
he stammered with the illogical disappointment of a 
child. 

“ Well, it’s your own fault, lad; if you’d obeyed my 
orders you wouldn’t have had that accident,” Daish 
said bluntly. “ There, never mind! You’ve seen 
all there is to see, and you’ll be able to come in for the 
distilling. But listen, Charley—I can’t have any more 
tricks, or trying to do the men’s work,” he added 
more gravely. “ Machinery is worse than knives, and 
accidents more sudden.” 

“ All right, guv’nor,” was the boy’s usual response. 
“ I don’t want to fall into your coppers.” He looked 
up with a frank curiosity a minute later and asked a 
question no one else at Leith would have dreamed of 
asking. “ What was it as took you away from the 
reaping ? ” he said. “ I see’d the girl come.” 

“ It was a message from my landlord,” said Daish, 
surprised into giving a direct answer to the cool 
inquiry. “ Sir Henry Leith . . . what’s the matter 
now ? ” 


6o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


For Charley had drawn back as if stung, with a face 
that was as blanched as it had been by the accident, 
and frightened eyes. 

“ Nothing/’ he said defiantly. “ I don’t know the 
bloke. Didn’t visit much amongst Sir ’Enrys or any 
of that sort. Does he live about ’ere ? ” 

“ He lives at Leith Place,” said Daish quietly, 
watching the betraying face with keen eyes. It 
flashed into his mind that Sir Henry was a magistrate, 
and that it was extremely probable that Charley had 
been up before him ; but he did not press the question. 
His landlord might be able to supply him with certain 
missing links in Charley’s history, once he saw him 
and recognised him ; but if he asked the boy he would 
only lie, that was certain. 

“ That booze of yours has made me sleepy—I’ll 
have a nap,” said Charley with elaborate unconcern. 
He curled down in the hay like a terrier might, resting 
his mop of black hair on his uninjured arm. 

“ Got anything to amuse you, when you wake up ? ” 
asked Daish with unaltered kindness, in spite of the 
suspicions roused by Sir Henry Leith’s name. He 
always intended to treat Charley with the just and 
impartial consideration that he showed to his men, 
and he always ended by being beguiled into an indul¬ 
gence he might have given to a pet monkey. 

“ I’ve got those papers of yours here,” said the boy 
sleepily, pulling one of the old Graphics out of the 
hay at his side. He glanced up with his black eyes 
narrowed by sleep, and an impish smile on his lips. 
“ There’s a girl here as dresses herself up like a boy 
from the streets and thinks she can take us off! Where 


LAVENDER HARVEST 


61 


is she ? ” He turned the pages, and found a picture 
of a young lady in a set of expensive furs driving a 
motor-car. “ That’s ’er,” said Charley. “ Miss Car- 
lotta Edison. I knows ’er sort ! A pink and white 
face as clean as a cat, and a broom, and that’s a 
‘ City arab ’ !—She goes to the ’dustrial ’omes and 
sees the nice little boys and girls readin’ the Bible, 
and then she imitates ’em. She’d like to get ’old of 
me and my pals and see the real thing, I don't think ! ” 
All Charley’s gamin accent and mannerism seemed 
to have come back with his scorn of the well-advertised 
London actress whose name was vaguely familiar even 
to Daish, though he was not fond of the class of enter¬ 
tainment at which she figured. As he descended the 
ladder to the stables again he wondered what the lady 
in the rich furs and the motor-car would have thought 
of the “ real thing ” as Charley spoke of himself and the 
other vagrants, and whether she could ever have 
reproduced his inimitable manner and accent. Yet 
his thoughts wandered away from Miss Carlotta Edison 
in a satisfaction that it was only in such bursts of 
irony as she had inspired that the boy slipped into his 
Cockney twang and vulgar phrasing, and that the more 
they were associated the more Charley seemed to 
catch his master’s cleaner English and better manners 
with characteristic quickness. It seemed that he 
could assimilate anything—the life of the slums, the 
life of the farm, or even the more refined atmosphere 
of Daish’s student days, and the aesthetic beauty of 
the lavender, both in the fields and the water-colour 
sketch. What a nature to rescue from a slum environ¬ 
ment ! What a crying shame if such possibilities 


62 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


ended in the police-court and the prison cell! John 
Daish felt his philanthropy a wise measure, even if he 
showed infinite indulgence in reclaiming his queer 
protege, and was again justified in his folly. 

He found the reapers had slackened a little in the 
heat of the day, as was inevitable without his own 
supervision, and was perhaps a trifle more the master 
to reinstate his authority, which might well have been 
jeopardised by his attitude towards Charley. He 
fancied the men looked at him a little curiously, but 
could trust his own control to make his face a blank, 
and to answer carelessly to enquiries that the boy was 
all right'—he had turned a bit faint, but would soon 
get over it. 

“ Lucky it was no worse, sir. Those lavender 
sickles are nasty things,” said old Abel, straightening 
his back from the stooping. " I mind the time I 
nearly took my own arm off in your father’s day, 
getting careless like and proud of cutting faster than 
the other men. And there was not a doctor nearer 
than Carshalton then, and the old gentleman ups with 
me into the gig, all bloody as I was, and takes me over. 
A nasty accident that was ! I got the scar now.” 

John Daish was well into the swing of his work 
before the reminiscences had ceased. He cut the 
branching stems with one clean movement of the 
sickle, as Charley had tried to do, and flung the lavender 
aside before he answered: 

” Yes, a nasty accident. The boy has learnt a 
lesson. ... Ten minutes more before the dinner-hour, 
men. Let’s see how much we can get through.” 

The line of backs bent again under the midday sun. 


LAVENDER HARVEST 


63 


arid the sickles whispered through the stiff stalks as 
the bruised sweetness fell from its upright glory. 
Over the despoiled field the bees and the butterflies 
still hung in disconsolate anger, and the air was full of 
the ripe scent of the seeding harvest. It looked as if 
some creeping line of foemen was passing over the 
field, leaving desolation behind them, as the men 
moved slowly along their narrow pathways. Now 
and then one of them would mutter an oath and drop 
his lavender for the moment, whereat his comrades 
would look up and ask, " Stung ? ” as if it were so 
ordinary an occurrence that it hardly needed the 
expletive. For the bees had their revenge when they 
clung, half drowsed, to the flowers, and the men did 
not know it ; but stings were as common as treading on 
some drunken insect fallen on its back between the 
rows. The men who gathered up the lavender suffered 
most, for as soon as it fell the bees settled on it again 
in swarms and were not always visible. 

The gentle swell of the hillside was still lavender- 
purple, but the underside of the field had changed its 
colour to greyish-green where the clipped clumps 
showed the brown earth between. Only in the next 
field, where the young plants were more sparsely 
threaded out, the cloud of colour still seemed to float 
between earth and sky; for these would not be 
harvested until later, and would not reach their useful 
growth until next year. 

Suddenly, across the lavender fields and the potato 
patch, sounded the clang of a piece of metal on an iron 
ring—the rough-and-ready dinner-gong of Leith. 
The men finished cutting the lavender in their hands. 


64 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


laid down their sickles, and turned sweating faces to 
the welcome sound, saying an unconscious Grace 
before Meat : 

“ Thanks be to glory there’s the grub ! ” 

Bill Somers came up to the farmer with a sheepish 
air as they were moving towards the house, leaving 
the scented heap of lavender half piled in the van. 

“ What’ll I do about the boy, sir ? ” he said. “ I’ll 
take him over some dinner from my missus if I may.” 

“ Yes, do, Somers—it’s very good of you. I sup¬ 
pose he’ll want some dinner,” said Daish carelessly. 

He turned in to the farmhouse where his own meal 
awaited him. It was a good wholesome dish of liver 
and bacon, rich with brown gravy, and there were 
fresh vegetables from the garden. For Mrs. Skelton 
had no nice perception of more appropriate fare for 
hot weather, and took her master’s healthy appetite 
for granted. Nor was Daish inclined to quarrel with 
his own food after his toil during the morning, seeing 
that he had been up since six and had breakfasted 
early. What brought the little knit between his wide 
brows was the knowledge of the fare provided by 
Somers’ “ missus,” that would certainly take the form 
of a thick slice of fat bacon on a slab of bread—and 
the memory of a white, drawn face and a thin body 
curled up in the hay. There was a dish of ripe rasp¬ 
berries on his own table, and a curd cheese. He 
looked at them half furtively, and stretched out his 
hand towards them, but drew it back. 

“ Better not,” he thought. “ Nothing so fatal 
as favouritism, as Mrs. Skelton has warned me. 
Poor little lad ! If only the old woman had taken a 


LAVENDER HARVEST 


65 


fancy to him she would have fed him properly. But 
I might as well ask Hector. Damn these women ! 
they read your very mind. A sick child ought to 
appeal to her—but she would as soon feed the pigs ! ” 

He set to his midday meal pettishly, for Charley 
was spoiling his dinner as he had his tea on the occasion 
when the housekeeper had so roughly turned him out 
of the parlour. Daish was haunted by the thought 
that the men might forget his forlorn little patient 
in the loft, and he had forbidden the boy to come down 
under pain of his own displeasure, which he was 
beginning to realise was a factor with Charley, despite 
his defiance of law and order. There was a streak of 
satisfaction in the farmer’s mind over this, for power 
over any creature has its vague delight, and especially 
so when it is an object of interest that has turned sub¬ 
missive. 

John did not know that he hurried over his dinner, 
but it was with a sense of relief that at last he crammed 
his cap down over his eyes and strode out into the 
sunlight again. The men had not yet begun to straggle 
back to the work, as he could see by a glance across 
the empty fields, and there could be no harm in going 
round by the stables to see if Somers had remembered 
his promise to feed the prisoner in the hayloft. 

As he reached the door of the building where the 
farm horses were stalled John Daish stopped short in 
surprise, for he heard the sound of an old woman’s 
voice singing a hawking song that Londoners hear 
often enough in the month of July—the lavender song 
that quavers at the kerb when the hawkers carry 

baskets of stale, dry lavender for sale. Daish had 

E 


66 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


heard it himself, though it was not so familiar to 
country-bred ears. But he recognised the rheumy old 
notes of an elderly woman who has grown hoarse 
with straining her voice against the traffic. 








Won’t yer buoy my sweet bloom in’ la-ven-der? Sixteen full 





branch - es 


7ZZ 1 ZTZI pZZZZZZj —Z7-ZZZ^ 

ZZZ=^ -ZZ^TZZIZV-V- 

— - 9 - 9 - 

a pen-nay! You’ll buoy 



it once— you’ll buoy it 



twoice: 'Twill make yer clo's smell ve - ry noice! It makes a 



scent for pock-et - hand-ker-chers: Sixteen full branch - es a 



pen - nay!— Buoy my la - ven - der l 


The voice was so old and worn that in spite of the 
appalling Cockney accent there was something pathetic 
about it. But how on earth had an old lavender woman 
from the London streets made her appearance suddenly 
in the stables of Leith farm ? Daish moved a step 
forward to bring himself within view of the open door, 
and was greeted by a burst of unconscious laughter— 
unconscious of his presence, at least, for the audience 






















































































LAVENDER HARVEST 67 

inside the stable was too taken up with the street 
singer even to hear his approach. 

Daish found himself looking across the heads of 
a group of men, facing an empty stall, and in the stall 
stood a little bent figure in a draggled print skirt and 
shawl that the farmer guessed at once had been filched 
from the clothes-line of one of the mens wives. It 
was Charley, suddenly transformed into a matchless 
imitation of some old lavender woman whom he must 
have watched in the London streets countless times, 
and whom he was reproducing with a mimicry that drew 
uproarious applause from the men. His injured arm 
was still in the sling, but the shawl was folded over it, 
and in the other hand he carried a few sprays of 
lavender that he thrust forward with a quick running 
stream of hawking patter in an old woman’s weary 
voice : 

** Buoy me lavender, dearie-—jest fer luck, do ! I 
ain’t sold a bunch fer an hour. It do smell beautiful! 
Put it in yer clo’s, and you’ll never be without it. 
Jest these few bunches, laidy—I wants ter get ’ome, 
and I’ve ’ad ’ard times lately. Ah there, thank yer, 
laidy—taike the lot, do—jest to send me ’ome ! ” 

He broke into the last sad cadence of the song, his 
voice falling raucously on the stillness : 



Buoy my la - ven - der 1 


And then before Daish could draw back, or break 
into the impromptu entertainment—and he was half 












68 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


undecided which to do—the boy suddenly flung away 
the lavender, hitched his skirt up round him, and with 
a gleam of the devil’s own spite in his black eyes, 
changed his impersonation. 

“ 'O’s this, mates ? ” he said, and seizing an empty 
grain measure began bustling about an imaginary 
kitchen, slapping plates into the rack, making sauce¬ 
pans ring, scaring away a phantom fow r l from the 
threshold, while the men roared with laughter and 
applause. Good Heavens, the young imp ! he was 
the living caricature of Mrs. Skelton in a temper. 
John recognised the very way in which she ran her 
finger round a saucepan, pronounced it dirty, and 
summoned one of the unlucky farm girls to clean it 
all over again, though he had not known that he had 
observed these things. It was Charley who was scoring 
off his absent enemy with his powers of memory and 
the very genius of mimicry. 

But the final burlesque was its own undoing, for 
Charley suddenly stiffened himself as the housekeeper 
was wont to do when her master came into the kitchen, 
and was about to give a far from good-natured imita¬ 
tion of Mrs. Skelton’s respect for Daish’s presence. 
Raising his eyes as if to John’s stature, he looked up 
and past the men who faced him grinning, and caught 
Daish’s full, grave glance in reality instead of pretence. 
The evil light died out of his own face, and for a 
minute he looked frightened—the cowering fear of a 
child detected in wrong-doing. The next instant the 
farmer had vanished without Charley’s audience being 
aware of his vicinity; but the boy could not regain 
his self-possession. 


LAVENDER HARVEST 


69 

“ That’s all of the old girl to-day,” he muttered as 
if suddenly tired. “ I’m going up aloft again, I am— 
my arm ’urts ’orrid. You’d better double out to the 
fields too, bloomin’ quick, or you’ll be late.” He flung 
the skirt and shawl from him pettishly. “ That 
belongs to your missus, Jonah Wickham. She’d spank 
me for it if she could catch me—but she won’t.” 

The men trooped away, still laughing at Charley’s 
impersonations, while the boy himself climbed back 
into the sweet-smelling hay, and burying his face in 
his arms, again sobbed miserably, under his breath, 
with a vision before his hidden eyes of a beautiful 
angry face like a wrathful god’s, and stern eyes that 
had softened to a kinder blue only a few short hours 
before. 

“ I’m always doing something to make him angry,” 
he choked in the solitude of the loft. “ It’s my luck 
. . . and he did like me !—he did like me, or he wouldn't 
have seen to me himself—■— -* 



CHAPTER IV 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 

Hector’s objection to the boy Charley extended all 
over the farm, nor was he reconciled to the newcomer 
even after a week or so of seeing him about the place. 
The big dog would not condescend to attack him at 
sight, and in passing would only acknowledge his 
presence by a growl in his throat like the mutter of 
thunder behind the hills. Charley might pass in and 
out of the stables or the farm buildings on his legitimate 
work of feeding the stock, or through the stackyard 
to bring in fodder ; nor did Hector actually drive 
him away from the lavender-fields, though the cross¬ 
breed was as often as not at his master’s heels while 
Daish was overseeing the crops. But there was one 
place in which Hector would not allow his antipathy 
even to set foot, and that was the distillery. It was a 
favourite spot to the dog, who lay just inside the open 
door in the shade, and should Charley pass over the 
road beyond, the hackles on Hector’s back would rise 
and his square head be lifted from his paws with ugly 
intent. For some reason of his own he regarded the 
distillery as under his special protection, and it would 
have been dangerous for the boy to venture there unless 
Hector were off guard. 


70 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


7 i 

Charley had had no particular attraction towards 
the distillery, after his first refuge there, until the 
lavender crop was harvested. But when the sweet 
bundles were skewered up in the archangel mats and 
piled on the upper floor, the machinery that was to 
distil the precious oil became an object of eager 
interest to the active mind of the “ Lavender Lad,” 
as Daish sometimes called him in moments of private 
indulgence between them. He watched and waited 
for moments when the dog should be off guard, and 
once one of the men found him a prisoner astride a 
great beam that supported the roof, Hector lying 
below him with bared teeth. The boy was obviously 
scared, though he braggedit out, for his face was white 
and his body quivering when the man rescued him and 
protected him out of the building. After that Charley 
did not venture into the distillery unless one of the 
farm hands went over with him, but he contrived 
to see every piece of the machinery when it was tested 
and put in order, and had soon mastered this part of 
the work as he had not troubled to do the ordinary 
routine of farm life. 

He was skulking round the distillery one afternoon, 
as if drawn magnetically by the great boiler and the 
coppers which would begin their legitimate business on 
the morrow, when he caught sight of a woman’s figure 
entering by the gate which opened on the road, and 
through which Daish had seen him stealing away after 
his skirmish with Mrs. Skelton. Lady visitors were 
rare at Leith, and Charley’s sharp eyes told him that 
this was no woman on the farm, or from one of the 
few neighbouring cottages. It was not even the 


72 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


housekeeper, for Mrs. Skelton’s flat, angular figure 
was unmistakable even at a distance. 

The short road or drive down to the farmhouse was 
flanked on one side by the old pond, which had been 
converted into a reservoir for feeding the boiler in 
the distillery, and for an escape for the water from the 
coppers ; there was no cover to be obtained here. But 
on the other side of the road was a thickset hedge 
bounding a near pasture, and quick as a flash Charley 
had doubled behind this screen and was creeping 
along it on the field side, as noiselessly as any scout. 

The lady had paused at the gate with some delibera¬ 
tion, and was careful to latch it before she proceeded 
on to the farm, as if it were all quite familiar to her. 
As they approached each other, the boy on the inside 
of the hedge and the visitor on the outside, he could 
see her distinctly, himself unobserved, and he held 
his breath and clenched and unclenched his hands in 
a curiously uncivilised fashion. 

She was a tall girl, or rather young woman, for her 
figure was perfectly developed and had not the slight¬ 
ness and flatness of modern girlhood. She wore a 
plain white gown of some material that looked service¬ 
able enough to wash w r ell, and a rather large straw hat 
of a colour that milliners call “ burnt,” though it was 
nearer pale coffee than sunburn. Under the shady 
hat two great plaits of corn-coloured hair were bound 
round her head in a very unfashionable manner, but 
which fulfilled two purposes—they suited her face, 
and they showed the length and beauty of the hair 
itself. She walked well, with the ease of one who is 
used to exercise and in perfect health, and as she 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


73 


passed Charley, now crouching moveless under the 
hedge, he saw that her face was oval in shape and 
flushed like a peach, and that her eyes were as deeply 
blue as the lavender in full blossom. He judged her 
shrewdly as a woman of thirty, sound in every limb 
of her splendid body and beautiful of form as she was 
of face ; and the distended black eyes that followed 
her unconscious movements were full of a great grief 
and fear. 

The young woman walked in the same measured 
fashion up to the door of the farmhouse, where she was 
met by a deep bay of welcome. Hector greeting her 
as he did few people besides his master. The dog rose 
on his hind legs and laid his forepaws on the visitor’s 
swelling breast, and she bent above him and caressed 
him with a gracious kindliness that seemed characteristic 
of her personality. Then there was a sound of welcome, 
and the farmer himself came to the door and took her 
familiarly by the arm. Across the still summer after¬ 
noon Charley could hear his deep voice full of unusual 
pleasure. 

“ Come in, Lillias—come in, girl. You are quite a 
stranger ! I have been wondering what had become 
of you, and trying to get time to ride down and look 
you up. Mrs. Skelton will get you tea. I am lucky to 
be in to see you.” 

“ I mustn’t hinder you at lavender harvest, Cousin 
John,” said the young woman as they passed into the 
house and beyond the range of Charley’s sharp eyes 
He knelt there still under the hedge, his hands clenched 
with rage and pain, until he slowly raised one and 
dashed the tears from his hot eyes. 


74 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ That's his girl! " he said through his wicked white 
teeth. 

John Daish had led his cousin into the pleasant, 
familiar parlour, where she sat down in the deep window- 
seat with the summer garden behind her as background 
to her fairness. Seen together, as the farmer stood 
leaning against the window recess, they were singularly 
alike—the same well-moulded features, smaller in 
the woman, the oval contour of the faces, the corn- 
coloured hair, and the blue eyes. Those eyes were 
deeper and more blackish in John, however; in 
Lillias they were as exquisite as the lavender. 

“ We do not begin distilling until to-night," said 
John Daish, smiling at her. “ You look very fit, 
Lilli as. Have you any news ? " 

Lilli as Daish shook her head, as if her thoughts 
came rather slowly before they found expression on 
her lips. “ I am a little worried over the bees, John. 
I am afraid we shaU not escape the disease after all." 

"It is no use my offering to come and look at 
them for you," said John, laughing. “ I should only 
anger them and get stung for my pains. No one can 
handle them as you do, Lillias." 

“ They know me," said Lillias simply. “ But I 
have a great mind to write to an expert about them. 
If the hives are the least infected I must get new." 

“ That will be a good deal of expense to you, I’m 
afraid," said Daish kindly. “ You must let me help 
j^ou, LiUias." 

" It would be more expensive to have the disease 
spreading. No, I need no help, John. If I did I 
would ask you to tide me over, as you know." 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


75 

The two pairs of serious blue eyes looked into each 
other affectionately. 

“ Does the honey pay you, Lillias ? ” 

“ Oh yes—particularly now that Sir Henry has 
got me such a connection amongst his friends. It is 
very good of him,” said Lillias placidly'—so placidly 
that John forgot or did not think again of the probable 
reason of his landlord’s “ kindness ” to fair Lillias. 
There were certain aspects of life, and complimentary 
relations between the sexes, that Lillias never appeared 
to see, and probably never did see. Sir Henry Leith 
was “kind.” He was John’s landlord and her own, and 
the reason of his kindness, to her especially, did not 
trouble her. Therefore by reflex it did not trouble John. 

“ Is Sir Henry at the Place ? ” he asked. “ I have 
not seen him.” 

“ No, because he has an attack of gout,” said Lillias 
with her serious shake of the head. “ Mrs. Clue, his 
housekeeper, you know, came over for some eggs, as 
their hens are not laying well, and she stayed for a bit 
of a gossip. So I have some news, after all, but the 
bees put it out of my head—they seem to fill my mind 
up this last few days.” 

“ What ! are the hives more important than Sir 
Henry ? Treason, Lillias ! ” 

“ More important to one of his cottage tenants, 
cousin. Mrs. Clue told me that there was to have been 
a party, but Sir Henry fell ill and had to put it off. 
There is only one gentleman at the Place, and he has 
nothing to do unless he shoots rabbits.” 

“ Poor devil! If Sir Henry is bad he is in bed, and 
that’s rough luck on his guest. Who is it ? ” 


76 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ I did not hear his name, but I shall be very glad 
if he shoots the rabbits ! "said Lillias with a low laugh. 
It was one of her prettiest gifts, like a gurgle of water 
running out of sight. “ They have been getting into 
the garden of late, and eating my vegetables.” 

“ We can give you plenty from the farm.” He 
turned as the door opened, with a smile in his blue 
eyes. “ Mrs. Skelton, we have a visitor to tea. And 
she wants a basket of vegetables sent over to the 
cottage. The rabbits have been thieving.” 

Mrs. Skelton stopped with the tea-tray in her hands, 
and her hard face lightened with a smile at the sight 
of the girl in the window-seat. Even such crooked 
personalities as the guard-dog and the housekeeper 
softened in the presence of Lillias Daish. 

“ Good-day, Miss Daish,” she said heartily. “ It's 
a long time since you’ve been over. Would you like 
some watercress with your tea, Master John ? ” 

“ Why, Mrs. Skelton, have you got any ? I have 
not been so spoilt since my cousin’s last visit! ” 

“ There’s plenty in the brook, and that idle boy can 
cut up there and bring some if he’s good for nothing 
else. He’s been cooling his heels for long enough this 
day! " 

John’s face suddenly straightened from its smile 
and became like a well-cut mask. There was no 
expression in it at all, nor the usual championship of 
Charley. For the boy was in disgrace with his master 
since that ill-advised mimicry in the barn, and though 
John had attended to his arm instead of sending for a 
doctor, he did so in unresponsive silence, and had 
had nothing to say to his protege from that day. Mrs. 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


77 


Skelton, fortunately, did not know the reason of his 
displeasure, but she rejoiced to see it and took advantage 
of it to enforce Charleys uselessness and rebellious 
ways. 

“ What boy is that ? ” asked Lillias calmly, turning 
her far-sighted lavender eyes from one tell-tale face 
to the other—John Daish’s so fiercely expressionless, 
the housekeeper’s grimly triumphant. 

“ Ah ! you’d better ask Master John,” said Mrs. 
Skelton as she laid the tea and fetched a second cup 
from the kitchen. “ If you said that Leith was evil- 
bewitched with the devil’s own spawn in the shape of 
that boy, I don’t think you’d be far wrong ! The very 
dog knows it, and will have none of him.” 

“ What is Mrs. Skelton talking about, cousin ? ” 
asked Lillias as she took her seat at the round table. 
“ Have you got someone new on the farm that she 
does not like ? ” 

Mrs. Skelton had flounced back to her own domains, 
and left John to make such explanation as he would. 
He sighed impatiently, and the cloud did not pass 
from his face as he answered: 

“ Only a poor child I took in some weeks since, to 
train as a farm boy. He is a waif from Covent Garden, 
who crept into the lavender van and came down with 
the men—a little gipsy of the roads and streets, and 
like some half-savage animal at present. Unluckily 
Hector took a dislike to him, thinking him a tramp, 
and Mrs. Skelton hates him because he is not so obedient 
or hard-working even as the boys about here—though 
they are bad enough ! But what can you expect ? 
He has lived all his life on his own resources—thieved 


7 8 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


in the London markets, travelled about with hawkers 
and pedlars and gipsies, and never known what routine 
or discipline were until now.” John’s handsome face 
began to flush, and he spoke with unusual earnestness 
for such a taciturn man. 

“ Poor child ! ” said Lillias softly. " How old is 
he ? ” 

“ He says he is fourteen or fifteen'—he hardly seems 
to know himself. But he is so stunted and ill-nourished 
that he might be twelve. He was literally in rags, 
recovering from pneumonia and just out of an 
infirmary, and he is not much better yet.” 

“ And you could not turn him away, John—that 
was so like you ! ” Lillias laid a well-modelled, sun¬ 
burnt hand on Daish’s arm, and her whole face seemed 
to shine with some inward kindness. " But it is a 
pity he is so idle. Does he show no liking for the 
work? ” 

“ I am afraid he has no liking for work of any kind,” 
said John with a half-shamed laugh. " He is a regular 
little vagabond, I know, but an extraordinary boy in 
many ways—quicker and cleverer than any farm 
hand.” 

“ In what way, then ? ” 

“ He has a great sense for pictures—colour of any 
kind, I fancy. It was the lavender in full bloom that 
first made him want to stay here instead of going off 
again on the tramp. And he has a perfect gift for 
mimicry—unfortunately. The men encourage him, 
and he amuses them. It makes it very difficult to 
keep order and to be quite just—I can say so to you, 
Lillias.” 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


79 


" But if he has these gifts they are thrown away on a 
farm boy,” said Lillias in her quiet, sensible manner. 
“ Wouldn’t it be better to send him to an Industrial 
Home, where they make a special point of finding out 
a boy’s bent, and teaching him a trade where he can 
follow it ? Designing, or something like that. There 

are several in London, and even in Surrey-” 

“ Oh, he does not want to go—and he would not 
stay there a day,” said John hastily. Somehow his 
cousin’s common-sense suggestion irritated him for 
once. Lillias was always practical and quite reason¬ 
able, but it dimly dawned upon his mind that her 
processes of thought were slow, if sure, and that she 
lacked intuition or sympathy with him. ” He is a 
difficult boy, I admit,” he acknowledged shamefacedly. 
“ But I think we have more chance of making a decent 
man of him at Leith than if we got him put into the 
mould of a charitable education ! ” 

“ But then, what will you do with him ? If he 
will not do farm work he is no use here, and it will be 
an excuse for the men to shirk also.” 

John Daish had already felt this so keenly that his 
face darkened still more. “ I thought of putting him 
to school for a bit,” he said slowly. “ As soon as he 
is stronger, of course. He is nothing but a bag of 
bones at present—he weighs as light as a feather ! Or 
I might teach him in the evenings myself. I think 
he would try to learn with me, because—he likes me, 
oddly enough.” 

He gave a queer little laugh, half false shame and 
half excitement, and the expression of his eyes as he 
glanced at his cousin was almost pleading. It said 



8o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


to her: " Don’t take this chance away from me-— 
this interest in life ! It is a strange and beautiful thing 
that has happened, but in the prosaic round of my 
days I have chanced on Romance again in the person 
of this vagrant boy. He is fulfilling the dreams of my 
youth.” 

Lillias’ grave glance was contemplative for a full 
minute before she attempted to answer. Her mind 
was not as responsive as her heart; but her perfect 
kindliness made her aware of some slowness in her¬ 
self, and she was very deliberate in her speech in 
consequence for fear of giving pain. A very beautiful, 
balanced nature had Lillias Daish, a little narrow from 
inexperience, very humble in her desire to help all 
humanity within her reach, and giving out love as a 
flower gives perfume—unconsciously, because it was 
God's gift to her. 

“ I should like to see the boy,” she said at last, in 
her slow, sweet fashion. “ I could perhaps judge 
better then.” 

“ If you’ve finished tea we’ll go and look for him,” 
said her cousin with a relief that was almost boyish. 
” I’m afraid it’s no use sending for him, the rascal! 
He is probably hiding somewhere. I have hardly seen 
him myself for some days. We have had a bit of a 
tiff through his first disobeying me and then being 
impudent.” 

" He seems rather a handful! ” said Lillias with 
her gurgling laugh. “ What do the men think ? ” 

“ Oh, he is popular with them because he amuses 
them. He told me so himself I That shows you what 
a quick-witted lad he is.” 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


81 


Lilli as forebore to answer because she could not 
acquiesce. The description of the boy was utterly 
opposed to all her principles for boys, or girls either, 
for that matter. She loved children, but she was not 
indulgent. Indulgence was by no means a Daish at¬ 
tribute, and she found John’s mood the more puzzling 
in consequence. Lillias looked upon life as a well- 
ordered thing, in which training was an accepted fact, 
particularly in one’s youth. The revolt of the last 
generation had either passed her by, or perhaps had 
come a few years too late to influence her. She had 
been a dutiful daughter, and from submitting to rule 
had learned to rule herself. That her own tempera¬ 
ment had made this easier than it was to quicker 
nerves and senses did not occur to her. She thought 
that John was spoiling his protege, and wanted to see 
what could be done to mend matters. 

The two cousins went out into the sunny evening 
in quest of Charley, but instead of the hunt that the 
farmer expected they had not far to go—not more 
than a few yards, as it turned out, for the rebel was at 
their very door. As they crossed the road to the farm 
buildings a slight figure issued from the stackyard 
half buried under a load of hay. It was Charley, 
exemplary in his duty, bringing fodder for the horses, 
and apparently so diligent in his work that he did not 
pause even to acknowledge his master in his hurry 
towards the stables. 

" Why, there he is ! ” exclaimed Daish involuntarily, 
so surprised that he betrayed his own doubts of Charley’s 
presence on the farm. The boy was far more likely 

to be playing truant than doing the light work 

F 


82 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


apportioned to him. He was exempt from cleaning out 
the stalls or the cowhouses, the labour involved requir¬ 
ing stronger muscles to do it satisfactorily ; but he was 
supposed to feed the stock, and to milk, and to do the 
endless small jobs that fringe the work on a farm. 
Half the time, as Daish had discovered, the boy would 
shirk even these duties and go off no one quite knew 
where, the men good-naturedly taking his place to 
save his being found out. 

“ Charley ! ” he called authoritatively. 

The boy was balancing the load on his round black 
head and right shoulder to save his left arm, which still 
rested in a sling, though the flesh had healed more 
easily than Daish had dared to expect. He dis¬ 
appeared into the stables to deposit his hay, and came 
back like a good dog to heel with a promptness that 
did not deceive the farmer. He could judge much 
better of the boy’s temper from his mask-like face and 
the set of his lips than by his apparent docility. But 
he came up to the cousins boldly, with a touch to his 
black hair that seemed natural enough to Lillias but 
made John only the more suspicious. His sombre 
eyes were fixed on the lady’s face with a curious, almost 
hungry look in them, and the lids were a little swollen 
still from a recent passion of tears. 

“ Yes, sir ? ” he said firmly. 

Lillias was looking at him with kindly interest and 
some pity. He seemed to her to have been maligned, 
both by John and Mrs. Skelton. Here was a nice- 
mannered lad, prompt in obedience and only too willing 
to work, for the load of hay seemed a heavy one for 
his slight shoulders. 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 83 

" Why, my boy, what have you done to your arm ? ” 
she asked, touching the sling. 

“ Had an accident, ma’am, with one o’ the lavender 
sickles,” said Charley glibly, but his devouring eyes 
never left her face. “ Mr. Daish he did warn me, but I 
wanted to work with the men. It’s healing nicely, 
thank you.” 

He moved his arm quickly away from her hand, as 
if afraid of being hurt; but Daish knew that it was not 
that. For some reason his capricious protege resented 
the lady’s touch, and would not brook it, and his 
civility and good manners were far more ominous to 
Daish than if he had been rude. What had become of 
Charley’s Cockney accent, and his London slang and 
insolence ? He was speaking as prettily as a Sunday- 
school child to its teacher—the model child of the 
class ! 

“ Have you had your tea, Charley ? ” asked Daish 
abruptly. 

“ Yes, thank you, sir.*' 

“ Isn’t that a very heavy load for you, with your 
arm hurt ? ” said Lilli as, still intent on kindness. 
“ My dear John,” she broke off, in her natural practical 
manner, " the boy cannot go about in rags like that ! 
We must find him some clothes at least if he is to do 
regular work here.” 

Daish glanced at Charley in trepidation. For some 
reason that he could not himself explain he expected 
every moment an explosion of temper that would shock 
his cousin with an abuse that she would not entirely 
understand, couched in East End phrases. He knew 
that the suggestion of respectable clothes was as 


8 4 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


tinder to the spark of the boy’s resentment, though 
what he was resenting John could not rightly judge. 
He spoke almost hurriedly to avert a catastrophe. 

“ I am afraid we have no farm clothes at Leith 
about Charley’s size. We shall have to get him an 
outfit." 

“ Oh, but I have some things laid by of poor little 
Leslie’s, that would do for a time, and at least keep him 
warm,’’ said Lillias. Leslie was a little cousin who 
had died a year or so since, and whose wardrobe had 
been handed over to Lillias for disposal amongst the 
cottagers round about. “ There are some quite stout 
knickerbockers, and a jersey that would fit Charley, I 
am sure. And a pair of boots,’’ she added encourag¬ 
ingly. 

Then the storm broke. “ I don’t want yer charity! ’’ 
said Charley with such sudden fierceness that the girl 
drew back instinctively. “ You can take ’em to the 
work’ouse for yer own kids that yer’ve got some right 
to! Leave me alone. I’m respectable, ain’t I ? 
The coppers never ran me in for indecency yet, if my 
clo’s ’as ’oles in ’em. That’s more than you can say 
on Sunday, I bet, with yer skirts short and yer neck 
bare—’alf naked like all the rest of the girls out with 
their . . . ! ’’ The rush of words ended with a vile 
suggestion fortunately disguised in hyperbole. Neither 
of Charley’s hearers rightly understood it, for they were 
unlearned in the latest and foulest argot of the slums ; 
but one at least of them could judge its intention. 

John Daish was carrying a fight ash stick in his 
hand, which he had caught up as he went through the 
entry of the farmhouse, half from habit and half from 


THE BEAUTIFUL LADY 


85 


a memory that the cows would be driven in for milking 
about this time, and that two or three had but lately 
been parted from their calves and were a little wild. 
Without a moment’s pause—for if he had paused he 
would not have acted—he caught Charley by the 
collar of his ragged shirt and gave him two or three 
sound cuts with the ash, holding him in spite of his 
furious struggles. 

“ Now tell Miss Daish that you are sorry for what 
you said ! ” he commanded quietly. “ And then if 
you want to run away, you can go for good ! ” 

His face was very white under its sunburn, but the 
face of the boy had flushed dark red. He stood in 
John’s grasp like a poor little beaten cur, but the eyes 
that looked up at him were not murderous as they had 
been for Mrs. Skelton'—they were the eyes of the cur 
that licks the hand that has struck. One or two men 
driving the cows in, as John had expected, paused in 
amazement or the hope of a scene, and Li Hi as noticed 
them, though John and the boy did not. She was 
far the least excited of the group, and had kept her 
self-possession. 

“ John ! ” she said gently, “ please let him go. He 
is punished enough, poor child. The men are hanging 
about and watching you.” 

Daish slowly released his grip on the boy’s collar and 
turned his ashen face away. As he did so Charley 
vanished without the further apology. Whether he 
slipped into the stables and hid in the loft, or doubled 
across the stackyard, neither Lillias nor John Daish 
saw. But he was gone, and the two cousins walked 
on up to the gate of Leith in troubled silence. 


86 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ I am afraid this has vexed you, John ! ” said 
Lillias gently, as she took his hand in her warm clasp. 
“ Do not let it. It is nothing to me—only a poor 
uneducated boy’s habit of evil speaking.” 

“You see my difficulty now,’’said Daishin a hoarse, 
broken voice. “I have never laid a hand on him 
before, Lillias. He will run away from Leith and go 
back to the road ! ” 

“ I do not see why he should,” said Lillias reasonably. 
“He is well fed and housed here, and you say he is 
fond of you. A little punishment will not harm him— 
only I wish he were not so ill-looking and thin, poor 
boy ! ” In her heart she thought that the beating was 
probably what Charley needed, and had better have 
been administered before. And it was, after all, only a 
few strokes of a light ash stick. “ Don’t trouble your¬ 
self needlessly, John. I believe the boy will stay. I 
shall anyhow send up those clothes of Leslie’s. They 
will make him look more respectable—less like a gipsy. 
And when a boy feels respectable he is more likely to 
act so.” 

She pressed his hand with her own warm, kind 
fingers, and turned her fair smiling face on him as she 
passed through the gate. John Daish stood a moment 
looking after her. But he did not see the beautiful 
face or figure that were too familiar to strike him afresh 
with their loveliness—he only saw the look in Charley’s 
black eyes that were like a beaten cur’s, the look of 
absolute devotion and grieved hurt. 



CHAPTER V 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 

There was a ripe aroma in the air, almost too pungent 
for sweetness, and insistent to nausea ; for the dis¬ 
tillery was at work again, after nearly twelve months 
of rest. 

Three of the men were throwing the mass of the 
reaped lavender into the first of the coppers, where it 
fell upon the perforated false bottom through which 
the steam would presently rise, scalding hot. Their 
bodies showed, half stripped and muscular, in the 
strong light of the new American lamp that lit the 
upper storey of the barn, while behind them the dying 
day glimmered through the great open doors that had 
been thrown back to catch the last of the sunset. 

Despite the heat of their task—and the sweat 
hung on the foreheads and necks of the working shift-— 
a change in the weather was making itself felt in the 
distillery. There would be a sharp ground frost, and 
the August night was as cold as October. Down below 
on the ground floor the furnace under the boiler was 
being fed with coke by Jonah Wickham’s brawny arms, 
and he was not sorry when the furnace door was open, 
for the fire was almost welcome. 

** The shift want to know if they can close the upper 

87 


88 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


doors, sir/’ he said, pausing in his grimy task as Daish 
entered the building. “They say it's cutting cold/' 

“ Yes, of course—the light is all but gone now,” 
said Daish a little absently, running his eye over the 
condensers and the separator, and mechanically taking 
the water gauge on the boiler. Forty pounds of steam 
was beginning to pass through the gauge to feed the 
coppers, and the pressure was one man's special charge. 
“ How does the lamp go, Wickham ? ” 

“ First rate, sir. Its a fair treat after the old 
’uns.” 

Daish turned to run up the stairs to the upper floor, 
but paused on the lowest as if carelessly struck by a 
thought. 

“ Seen anything of the boy, Wickham ? ” 

“ Charley ? No. He’s gone off to his own quarters, 
I reckon. There’s nothing for him to do here, and he’d 
be in the way,” said Jonah a trifle shortly. He was 
no partizan of the boy’s, though he laughed longest 
and loudest at his mimicry, for Jonah’s “ missus ” 
objected to the tricks that Charley was too fond of 
playing and had set her husband’s surly temper 
against him. 

“ He was very keen on seeing the distilling, and I 
don’t want him tumbling into the coppers or getting 
smashed with the hoods,” said Daish with a slight, 
forced smile. “ Give an eye to him if he turns up.” 

“ All right, sir. But I don’t think he will. I haven’t 
set eyes on him since he fed the ’orses this afternoon.” 

There was a sly twinkle in Jonah’s eye, for he had 
been one of the witnesses of Charley’s unlooked-for 
thrashing—a fact Daish had overlooked. The farmer’s 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 89 

handsome face was absolutely unconcerned as he ran 
up the ladder-stair, but his heart beat angrily—in 
anger at himself for the well-merited punishment he 
had given, and anger at the man for having appreciated 
it. He had not seen Charley himself since he parted 
from his cousin at the farm gate ; but he had no chance 
to hunt for the boy this time, even if he had been so 
unwise. If Charley had run away in earnest, blind 
with rage, he must be allowed to go. There was too 
much work ahead through the coming nights and days 
to waste even half an hour, and the rich crop was at 
stake. 

As John Daish stepped on to the upper floor the 
men were actually treading in the lavender, jumping 
on it with their heavy boots to press it down, but the 
thickness of the crop now between them and the per¬ 
forated bottom saved them from the steam. Daish 
stood and watched them until the copper was full, and 
the men began to work on the pulley, lifting the great 
hood into place again, and bolting it down so that the 
precious crop was almost hermetically sealed. Round 
the edge of the hood there was sufficient space for a 
small water suction which prevented it rising even 
under pressure of the steam. The men worked in 
shifts of four and a half hours'—two on and one off— 
but the farmer himself knew that he should be about 
all night, with hardly an hour's sleep, and that this 
vigil must go on for the best part of a month. 

There was no sign of Charley upstairs or down. John 
Daish stood over the work, while the second copper 
was charged, talking to the men, or smoking, for the 
crop at least was not inflammable. Down below there 


9 o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


were “ hammock ” or canvas chairs for the shift 
while they waited for the oil to “ come over ” into the 
separator. The boiling of the whole charge took five 
hours, but the oil began to come over in an hour and 
a half. When the second copper was full they went 
downstairs and chatted with Jonah, or dozed, the 
farmer himself being the only one who did not 
sleep. 

He sat with his head resting on his hand, the crisp 
ripples of his bright hair catching the light, and his 
face like some fine sculpture in its strange surroundings. 
His eyes saw nothing of the evening paper which he 
held, and he was certainly not thinking of his own 
beauty, though his mind was quite distinctly aware 
that Lillias had made a picture as she turned to him 
at the gate, and he recognised her likeness to himself. 
But he was only thinking of Lillias as the unlucky 
factor in this afternoon’s contretemps —her beautiful 
serene face bent over Charley just before that extra¬ 
ordinary burst of evil speech from the boy. What 
demon had possessed him ? And what had induced 
him in turn, John Daish, to handle the little lad so 
roughly ? True, Charley had richly deserved it. But 
Charley had deserved it many times and he had 
always kept his temper. The dream of keeping and 
creating a son after his own heart faded out in the 
glow of the great furnace as Jonah shovelled in the 
coke and slammed the door, and he turned with a 
start to find that the oil had begun to come over, and 
to watch the steady stream of oil and water running 
into the separator as limpid as if it were one element. 

“ When did she come over ? ” he asked the man 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 91 

who had been on watch more attentively than him¬ 
self. 

“ At ten o’clock, sir.” 

“ Then it will be off at three,” said the lavender 
farmer, but without his usual interest. “ I’ll be back 
before that ”—and he walked rather heavily to the 
distillery door for a breath of air. 

Cold starlight shone over the deserted fields, and 
the frost he had foreseen was already in the air. He 
lifted the unconscious, tragic beauty of his face to the 
night sky and wondered if a shivering boy were trying 
to sleep under the hedges. As he turned towards 
the farmhouse for half an hour’s sleep Hector thrust 
a big muzzle into his hand and followed him with slow 
and rather stately steps. They were a fine couple in 
the starlight, and had a curious simple dignity in com¬ 
mon. Until then Hector had been lying in his usual 
place in the distillery doorway, but now he mounted 
guard in the porch of the house after his master 
entered as if his dog’s instinct told him that all was 
not well with the being he loved best in the world. 

The minute the dog was out of the way, a little 
ragged shadow showed for an instant in the distillery 
doorway. Then it seemed to fade into other shadows, 
and the men heard no patter of feet ascending the 
ladder to the floor above ; but when the new shift 
went on duty to take the hoods off, they were joined 
by the familiar figure of the boy, on which they did 
not think to comment save for a friendly warning. 

“ Now, you limb of Satan, don’t go tumbling into 
the copper. The lavender would be no sweeter for 
boiling you up with it ! ” 


92 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


'* You’d get the highest price you’d ever made over 
the blamed oil! ” retorted Charley with an effort after 
his usual repartee ; but he relapsed into an unusual 
silence, and save for his active curiosity he seemed 
strained and unlike himself. The men, naturally, 
put it down to his humiRation of the afternoon. 

“ The master gave you a dusting for once, didn't 
'e, sonny! ” said one of the older men with sly good- 
humour. “ Tried it on once too often, with your 
sauce ! You should have kept it for the ’ousekeeper, 
and left his girl alone.” 

“ Who was the young woman ? ” asked Charley 
shortly, curbing his hot temper with an iron will. 
He would have flown out at the man if he had not had 
a burning desire to find out all about the girl who was 
responsible for his downfall. 

“ Miss Daish, the master's cousin. She live in one 
of Sir ’Enry’s cottages on the Leith road, and she’ll 
live ’ere some day, likely.” 

“ Shut your mouth ! Sir ’Enry’s sweeter on her 
than the master,” said the other man who was helping 
to uncharge the coppers. “ He give her mother that 
old keeper’s cottage years ago for the girl’s sake, and 
he lets her live there still, though there’s many men 
with families as would be glad to ’ave it. A nice little 
place it is, and well built, though they don’t want a 
keeper there now since they sold some of the land 
round. Pity as she ain’t married, at least.” 

" She might ’ave 'alf the neighbrood if she liked," 
commented the first speaker as he hung on the pulley. 
“ Shouldn’t mind 'aving her myself! She’s a beauty, 
she is.” 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 93 

" Yes, you’d look well walking her out ! ” retorted 
his mate sarcastically. “ It's likely she'd take you 
on, when she won’t 'ave the master ! " 

Charley’s frowning black eyes glanced up sharply, 
but he asked no more questions and stood in moody 
silence while the men forked out the waste and flung 
it through the wooden doors on to the ground below. 
Exquisite as was the scent of the lavender when in 
flower it was sickly and medicinal when the very 
essence was being extracted from the plants, and the 
boy moved towards the open doors as if mechanically 
seeking the clean night air outside. As he did so 
there came a swift patter of feet on the ladder, and 
Hector’s warning growl rising to a full-throated roar 
of rage at the sight of his antipathy actually in posses¬ 
sion of the premises he had guarded heretofore. Some 
instinct seemed to have brought the dog from the 
farmhouse back to the distillery and up to the higher 
floor where Charley was, or, no less wonderful than 
instinct, the animal power of scent may have told him 
that the one person he was determined to keep out 
had entered the old barn in his absence. 

The men had just cleared the last of the sodden mass 
of lavender from the copper, and were lowering the 
false bottom back for the next charge. Though the 
hood was off it was still scalding hot in the copper, the 
boiling steam rising through the perforated floor. 
Charley had turned with the quickness of a cat at the 
sound of Hector’s bay, and leaving the dangerous 
position of the unguarded doorway behind him he 
dodged round the copper, avoiding his adversary 
by less than a yard; but the dog, more cumbersome 


94 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


and heavy in his onslaught, could not turn at the 
same moment, and in his blind rush went too near 
the edge of the copper and slipped half over, his 
great body hanging as his muscular forelegs tried 
to save him with the desperation of a drowning 
man. 

The two farm labourers watched in a kind of petri¬ 
fied horror, expecting the dog to slip back and be 
scalded to death in a few seconds. They were as 
slow of movement as of mind, and the thing had been 
too sudden and too ghastly for their interference. 
But quick as lightning the boy Charley had thrown him¬ 
self face downwards at the edge of the copper, and 
with all the puny strength of his thin arms and little 
weight was dragging at Hector to save his falling back¬ 
wards. He had got his hands gripped under the dog’s 
great armpits, but the late injury to his own arm from 
the lavender sickle hampered him, and Hector’s 
weight threatened to drag them both into the copper 
instead of out of it. For a second of agonised time 
they hung there, slipping, scrambling, edging ominously 
nearer the hot breath of the pit below them—and it 
was this that John Daish saw as he came back on 
to the upper floor of the distillery after his brief 
rest. 

He never knew how he got across those few yards 
and flung his own strength into the balance, hauling 
both boy and dog out on to the floor and safety. His 
chest was heaving, and the sweat was running down 
his face as he knelt beside them, so shaken himself 
that for the minute he could not speak. Then Hector 
shook himself, and walked stiffly over to the wall. 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 95 

where he lay down as if dazed, and the boy tried to 
scramble to his feet also. 

“ Good God, Charley ! You might both have been 
scalded to death,” said Daish with a quivering 
face. 

“ The lad was all right, sir,” interrupted one of the 
men respectfully but quite firmly. “ It was the dog 
slipped over, chasing him, and he clung on and saved 
his going down.” 

“ And why the hell didn’t you come to the rescue 
and help him ? The dog weighs half a ton ! ” said 
Daish fiercely. 

“ It was all so quick like'—it hadn’t hardly hap¬ 
pened when you come in ! ” stammered the other 
man. “ I thought they was both over in the first 
flash.” 

“ Small credit to you they weren’t ! ” muttered 
Daish, turning to look for Charley. To his surprise 
the boy had left his side and gone to Hector, by whom 
he was crouching down, fondling the great, square head 
and jowl. The dog allowed it without any movement 
but a slight quiver of his tail. 

“ ’E likes me now ! Tm and me is going to be 
pals ! ” said Charley, looking up with his black eyes 
like blots of darkness in an ashen face. 

“ You saved his life. Hector knows that, Charley.” 
—Daish held out his hand and spoke under his breath 
that the men should not hear. “ I’m sorry for what 
I had to do this afternoon.” 

“ It’s all right,” said the boy sullenly. “ I cheeked 
your girl.” 

“ She is my cousin.” 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


96 

“ Ain’t she your girl ? ” 

“ No—not that way.” 

“ If I’d known that I wouldn’t have put it across 
her like I did/’ said the boy simply. “ I was like 
Hector here.” 

“ Jealous ? ” A little quiver passed over Daish’s 
face, and some other spasm seemed to grip his heart. 
Was the little lad getting to feel for him as he did 
himself ? Lie stood looking down at the two forms 
crouching at his feet, his face in the strong lights and 
shadows of the distillery more striking even than by 
day. A painter would have revelled in the unconscious 
picture they made. 

“ Charley, why did 3 T ou try to save Hector ? ” 

“ Dunno,” muttered the boy. “He’s your dog. I 
know you love him.” He passed his arm fearlessly 
round the dog’s thick neck and patted him. “ I 
thought it might make up—for what I said—this 
afternoon.” 

“ If you had both been killed ? ” 

“ Didn’t care.” 

“ I give you my word I’ll never lay a finger on you 
again, boy,” said Daish quietly. “ Will you try not 
to deserve it ? ” 

“ Better not promise—either of us,” said Charley 
with an odd, upward look. “ I’m half crazed when 
I’m jealous, and I spit up a lot of muck I’ve heard 
and forgotten. You might have to hit me, if you 
wanted to stop it.” 

“ I don’t think I should—now,” said Daish with a 
slight, strained smile. “ Unless I thought it was 
the only thing to help you—to keep you off worse. 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 97 

trouble. But we’ll do our best to avoid it. Will you 
try ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” said the boy with a big breath. “ I’ll 
try.” 

“ And you’ll be civil to my cousin now ? ” 

“Til wear the bloomin’ baby-clothes she wants to 
send, if you like,” said Charley, and Daish felt that 
his capitulation was complete. “ But I could set 
myself up so yer shouldn’t know me if you’d give me 
a quid,” he added grudgingly. 

The corners of John’s mouth really relaxed at last, 
as much with the relief of being friends with his 
wild protege as from amusement, and he stooped and 
patted the thin shoulder as he might have done his 
dog. For a minute he expected Hector to growl, 
knowing his jealousy; but the great hound took no 
notice, and Charley’s arm remained round the thick 
neck. Daish was well content to leave them there 
while he looked after the distillery with a lightened 
heart : and when later on he missed the boy he learned 
from the shift on duty that he had gone over to the 
stables to bed. 

“ Time enough, too,” said Daish. “ We should all 
be glad to turn in, eh, Tom ? ” 

“Not much chance of that, sir, for the next 
month.” 

“ When did the boy come into the distillery ? Do 
you know ? ” 

“ About ten, warn’t it, Jack ? He’d bin poking his 
nose into everything for an hour or so before the dog 
smelt him and went for him. Lord ! I thought they 
was both done in for a minute ! ” 


G 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


98 

“ They’d never have come out of the copper alive 
once they fell in ! The bottom’s scalding,” said Tom, 
and Daish went very sick for a moment, though his 
face did not alter. 

He was not anxious to have Charley “ poking his 
nose into everything ” for the remainder of the time 
that the great coppers were at work, though he judged 
that his recent peril would teach the boy caution as no 
lectures could do. But nothing could keep him out of 
the distillery. The machinery seemed to fascinate 
him, and his quickness in mastering work that pleased 
him was demonstrated rather comically to Daish at 
the end of those exhausting weeks when the last of 
the lavender was being distilled. He came into the 
barn one day about two o’clock after a hasty meal in 
the farmhouse, and stopped to speak to Jonah, on 
work again at the furnace. The other men were 
resting, but there was Charley sauntering about from 
condensers to separator with a renewed assurance that 
had been absent from his manner on the first night of 
the distilling. It was evident that he also was the 
happier for the reconciliation. Without having seen 
the master, the impudent little figure, hands in the 
ragged pockets, strolled over to the condensers to 
look at the flow-pipe in an imitation of Daish that was 
for once unconscious. 

“ When’s she over, Bill ? ” said the boy patronisingly 
to the resting shift, and the man laughed at the assumed 
knowledge. 

“ Coming now, sir ! ” said Bill Somers with mock 
deference. 

“ Off at seven then ! ” said the boy triumphantly. 


WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DISTILLERY 99 


and Daish’s heart beat with an odd sense of pleasure 
in his quickness. 

“ We shall make a Lavender Lad of you yet. Charley! ” 
he said as he walked over to the pipe to look at the 
flow. 


✓ 



CHAPTER VI 

A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 

“ There is no doubt that man is not at his best with 
the gout ! I’m whacked to the world, Thorne.” 

Sir Henry Leigh looked somewhat ruefully at his 
swollen and bandaged feet resting on the cushioned 
stool that supported them, and then glanced with 
secret envy at the active figure of his guest, who was 
lighting a cigar with the loving care of the man who 
has smoked Havanas all his life and treats them with 
practised nicety. Colonel Thorne was snipping off 
the end as carefully as a gardener prunes roses, his 
whole attention concentrated on the process. 

“ My dear feller, don’t apologise to me ! I know 
what the damned thing is. I’m most awf’ly sorry,” 
he said, as he put the cigar between his teeth and lit 
it, puffing out a little cloud of smoke whose fragrance 
appealed to him more than the costliest scent that any 
lady of his acquaintance could purchase from Morny’s. 

“ You don’t look as if you ever had the gout,” 
grumbled his host, with a twist of his whole face as 
the momentary agony took him. “ ’Pon my word, 
you look about thirty-five this morning! You might 
be that scapegrace nephew of yours. What’s become 
of him, by the way ? ” 


JOO 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE ioi 


“ D’you mean Eddy ? Oh, he's married and settled 
down—married Poker Trefusis’ daughter." 

“ But he was married !—some celebrity on the stage, 
wasn’t it ? They told me so at the Rag." 

“ That was a disaster, and the girl left him—• 
fortunately. You mustn’t judge him from that any 
more than a Derby horse from its trial. I like old 
Eddy—he’s a good plucked ’un. That beast of a 
woman hit him hard when she bolted, and he wouldn’t 
show it. He paid out of all proportion to what she 
was worth." 

“ I don’t know," said Sir Henry, with a sudden 
thought that surprised his hearer. “ I think that 
when you’re settling up accounts for past happiness 
you are apt to forget what you’ve had. It’s a belief 
of mine that Providence never overcharges by one 
dam’ farthing. The difficulty is to realise how much 
it all meant when you come to pay. It doesn’t seem 
worth while—but it was ! ’’ 

“ Yes, and it will be again, next time ! ’’ said Thorne 
with a flash of honesty. 

“ Ah, well, you’ve kept your youth. That last 
speech gives you away. I said you might be about 
five-and-thirty to look at'—now you are feeling it 
as well. How the deuce do you do it ? " 

The colonel’s good-looking face fit up with the 
innocent pleasure of a child that hears itself praised. 
He knew that he was a smart man still, and he knew 
that he was attractive from the silent comment that 
he always read in the eyes of both men and women— 
particularly women. 

“ I’m pretty fit/' he acknowledged, stretching his 


102 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


muscular arms as if their suppleness pleased him. 
“ But I do suffer from gout. Eve been laid up for 
weeks with it sometimes. It's Hell! But they say 
that if you have it you have nothing else.” 

“ That’s no comfort to me,” said poor Sir Henry, 
shifting himself uneasily in his long chair. “ I thought 
I should be out and about with you by now, and all 
that confounded doctor has done for me has been to 
let me come downstairs to lie up like a bally corpse ! ” 

Colonel Thorne’s expression was divided between 
amusement and sympathy. “ Poor old chap ! ” he 
said. “ You’d be happier in bed. But don’t bother 
about me, please. I’m perfectly happy pottering about 
the place, and having a look at the horses. Your 
grooms are capital fellers.” 

“ But I feel I’ve got you to come down here for 
nothing. Look here, Teddy, do take a gun and go 
and have a pot at the bunnies with the farmers. 
You see that I can’t entertain you myself.” 

“ I’d rather wait till you’re fit to come too—I 
would really, Harry.” Whether Colonel Thorne meant 
it or no, the grace of his assertion betrayed the sympathy 
that was almost as quick as a woman’s. On the 
surface he was nothing but a kindly, careless man of 
the world, with considerably more heart than brains ; 
but he deserved his popularity with his fellow-men for 
qualities which perhaps the other sex could not gauge. 

" But you can see that I shan’t be fit this side 
Christmas ! ” said his host despairingly. “ I’m certain 
that Matthews is treating me all wrongly. I’ll send 
for a man down from London.” 

“ He’ll only charge you fifty of the best for his time, 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 103 

and not tell you a thing your local man doesn’t know. 
The attack has got to run its course, and the sooner it’s 
out the better.” 

“ Well, anyhow, to oblige me, go and shoot the 
bunnies. If you don’t want to go alone I’ll send a 
message over to Daish. He’ll let you shoot over his 
corn. I was going to ask him to let me come one 
day.” 

“ Who is Daish ? ” 

“He’s one of my tenants; only a farmer, but I’d 
rather have him than any man round. He’s a dead 
shot for one thing-” 

“ These farmers are often the best sportsmen.” 

“ Well, to tell the truth, I don’t think it’s all for 
sport. He’s an odd fish. He made himself a dead 
shot because he couldn’t bear inflicting unnecessary 
pain on any living thing. If the rabbits didn’t eat his 
crops I believe he’d never kill ’em ; but they had to 
be killed, and he hated traps, and so he trained him¬ 
self to kill as clean as might be.” 

Colonel Thorne turned round rather quickly, with 
a curious interest in his dark eyes. “ I like that,” 
he said. “ I confess to you, Harry, that I’ve almost 
given up shooting because I can’t bear killing anything 
myself.” 

“ Daish will suit you then,” said Sir Henry, turning 
on his chair with a suppressed oath. “ I think you are 
a couple of lunatics myself—but you’re both dam’ good 
fellers ! ” 

“ Where does Daish live ? ” asked Colonel Thorne, 
with the laudable intention of taking himself off his 
host’s hands and letting him rest. He deprecated Sir 



io 4 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Henry being downstairs at all, but it had been most 
unlucky that on the very day of his arrival the gout 
should have got its grip on his friend and driven him 
to lie up. 

“He’s the tenant of Leith farm—that land on the 
right of the Leith road; you passed the gate on your 
way here. It’s a lavender farm.” 

“ What ? ” 

“ He grows lavender and peppermint, and doesn’t 
do much in stock or other crops. I believe he makes it 
pay too. You ought to see his fields in flower—they 
are a sight. But I’m afraid he’s reaped them now.” 

“ For the London markets ? ” 

“ Oh no—he sells a little in the markets, but the 
bulk of it is distilled for lavender oil. Drive over and 
see him, there’s a good feller, and tell him I’m laid up 
and I want him to let you shoot over his fields when he’s 
cutting the corn.” 

“ I’d rather walk—I’ve had no exercise for days,” 
said Thorne, stepping out of the open window on to 
the lawn, and drawing his cap down over his eyes. He 
did not in the least fear the walk in the August day, 
though the sun was shining bravely this morning ; but 
he was not particularly keen on shooting with a stranger 
and without his host, and he paused at the stables to 
have a chat with his friends the grooms, and to look 
over the horses out at grass for the twentieth time. 
Colonel Thorne loved horses. Lie had been a racing 
man until he found that it is the bookmakers who 
invariably make the fortunes, and abandoned racing 
with straightened means ; and he had worn silk him¬ 
self for the honour of his regiment and won more glory 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 105 

for it than recompense for his own pocket. He had 
hunted, and played polo, and bred ponies, and the 
very smell of a loose-box was dear to him, though the 
fastidious might have turned up their noses. He was 
thinking more of his friend’s stud than of anything 
else in the world as he took a short cut across the park 
by the direction of the stablemen, and very naturally 
lost his way, and instead of finding himself in the Leith 
road, emerged into a shady lane where the great elms 
of Surrey met overhead and dappled the ground with 
dense shade and flecks of sunshine. The light through 
the branches was so beautiful that Colonel Thorne 
was content to have lost his way, and he stood still 
for a moment to appreciate it before sauntering on to 
the only dwelling in sight to ask for the right direction. 

It was a substantially built cottage, with a tiled 
roof worked in patterns, and casement windows of a 
newer type than the old leaded panes. Obviously 
not a very old cottage and more hygienic to live in by 
consequence—old enough, however, for the ivy to 
have grown all over its frontage and side walls, and 
to have invaded the tiled roof. And what a garden 
bloomed before it, shut in by a low wooden paling 
that did not hide its treasures of ox-eye daisies, and 
sheaves of golden-rod, cerise-coloured phlox and small 
sunflowers, while the hollyhocks grew and bloomed 
above a man’s height, eight and ten feet up in the glad 
air ! The whole place had the cultivated look of a lodge 
or keeper’s cottage, as if it could depend on a sub¬ 
stantial patronage, and yet it guarded no gates to the 
Place, and was a little oasis on the roadside by itself. 
It was, in fact, the identical cottage of which Charley 


io6 THE LAVENDER LAD 

» 

had heard the men speak as they trod the lavender 
and had once accommodated one of Sir Henry’s keepers; 
but, like other landowners, he had felt the necessity of 
retrenchment and had sold some of his land, thereby 
narrowing the area of his shooting and rendering the 
keeper unnecessary on that outlying part of his estate. 
He had kept the cottage to avoid the possibility of 
undesirable occupants too near to his preserves, and 
let it to tenants of his own choosing. 

Colonel Thorne leaned over the gate regardless of 
trespassing. The path to the door was mossy, and 
bordered by white pinks that were, alas ! no longer 
blooming; but patches of purple and yellow violas, 
and pink snapdragons, and flame-coloured nasturtiums 
did their best to atone, and the homelier kind of roses 
ran riot amongst everything else. 

It was the roses that did him service, and brought 
the picture to perfection before his actual vision ; for 
the door on the left side of the cottage deliberately 
opened, and a woman came out into the porch with a 
basket in her hand and a pair of gardening shears. 
She paused to train back a young growth of ivy with a 
deliberation that did not appear to see him, and then 
came into the garden, pushing her way between great 
clumps of daisies and the golden-rod, and snipping a 
red rose here and a pink cluster there to fill her basket. 
There was no hurry about her movements, nor any 
awkward concealing of herself or her occupation, and 
he could look his full upon a beauty that he had 
certainly never seen equalled for all his experience in 
many lands. 

She was very feminine ; he decided that in the first 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 107 

leap of his senses—or perhaps womanly was the word 
that suited her better. Two great plaits of corn-coloured 
hair hung over her shoulders to below her waist, and 
being bare-headed, he could see how rich the growth 
was above her broad, serene brows. She was wearing 
a coarse overall or gardening apron beneath which 
the lines of her breast and hips showed as clearly as 
if she were swathed. A woman rather than a girl, 
and yet her soft cheeks had the bloom of open-air 
peaches, and her firm chin had a little dimple in it like 
a child’s. Her elbows were dimpled too where the 
sleeves were rolled up above them as if she had been 
employed in some very simple domestic task, quite 
possibly in the cottage kitchen ; he could see the little 
nick in the smooth flesh as she raised her arm to cut 
a tossing bloom of white Scotch roses. I think it was 
then that Teddy Thorne lost his heart. 

Lilli as Daish, having filled her basket with enough 
roses for the sick lady at the vicarage, became aware 
of the good-looking man at the gate who was steadily 
regarding her. She was used to such attention from 
passing strangers, and trivial requests for a glass of 
milk, a few flowers, a direction to some mythical place, 
anything that could open a conversation. If it were 
an artist he was sure to develop an insatiable desire 
to make a study of the garden—and herself. Such 
things were easily disposed of under the guard of her 
calm dignity. But the gentleman leaning on the gate 
did not look like an artist. He was not a young man 
either, as her second glance reassured her, and yet for 
some occult reason she hesitated to approach him and 
ask his business. He was standing up now, and raised 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


io 8 

his cap with a determination that gave her no chance 
to retreat into the cottage. So she came towards him 
tranquilly, with no self-consciousness in her manner 
or the faintest indication that she knew he wanted to 
look at her closer. 

“ Could you direct me to Leith farm ? ” said Colonel 
Thorne in his charming voice. “ I have walked over 
from the Place, and I think that I have missed my 
way.” 

The sincerity of the statement took Lillias by sur¬ 
prise. He had invented no mythical destination, and 
he could hardly have mentioned her cousin's farm by 
happy chance. As he had come from the Place, and 
was obviously Sir Henry’s guest, it was credible that 
he had an errand to John ; and she was suddenly over¬ 
whelmed with a most unusual humiliation in having 
classed him with the mere admiring male who drifted 
past her gate. She had taken it for granted that this 
good-looking, obvious man of the world in his smart 
clothes wanted to look at and speak to her, as the 
nondescript artists and tourists and Cockney youths 
did; and he had done nothing of the sort. He had 
merely missed his way to her cousin’s farm with a 
message from Sir Henry! The peach bloom on 
Lillias’s smooth face deepened to a troubled shame, 
and her truthful eyes were full of an unuttered apology 
as she reached the inside of her gate and paused. 

“ John Daish is my cousin,” she said gravely, with 
those lovely lavender eyes looking full into Colonel 
Thorne’s. “ His farm lies on the left of the Leith road. 
If you walk up this by-lane for a hundred yards you 
will come to a stream which crosses it underground. 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 109 

and the road runs at right angles to it. Keep to the 
left, and it is the first farm you come to.” 

She had lifted her round bare arm and pointed up 
the lane beyond the point at which he had entered it. 
Her attitude was quite unconscious of him, but he 
wondered why she had flushed when she first spoke, 
and instantly put it down to an interest in the farmer 
cousin. 

“ Lucky dog! ” said Colonel Thorne to himself with 
a very real pang of envy. “ I have never seen eyes 
quite that colour before'—or such a mouth—or such a 
figure ” . . . and he heard his own easy tones run 
through his real thought in courteous thanks for the 
direction. 

“ Do you think I shall be lucky enough to find Mr. 
Daish at this hour ? I am afraid farmers are generally 
in the fields at harvest-time.” 

“ Mr. Daish has very little arable land, for what he 
has is under lavender or peppermint,” said Lilli as. 
“ Those crops were cut a week or so since, and the 
distilling is over.” 

“ It must be very interesting. I have never seen 
a lavender farm. I should like to see the crop before 
it is cut.” 

“ It is very beautiful,” said Lillias seriously. “ At 
least, the lavender is. The peppermint is only like our 
garden mint to look at, except that the plants are much 
larger and darker.” 

" The lavender must smell heavenly.” 

“ Not when it is being distilled. The oil is so strong 
it seems somehow sickly. Of the two we like the mint 
the better.” 


no 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


" Are there many lavender farms about here ? ” 

“ Not just here. There are some crops grown in 
other parts of Surrey, and in Bedfordshire." 

“ I wonder that more men do not take it up. I 
suppose it pays, or Mr. Daish would not give up so 
much land to it ? " 

Suddenly Lilli as perceived that she was being de¬ 
tained at the gate just as other men would fain detain 
her, though with a skill that it was much more difficult 
to circumvent. Whether or no Sir Henry's guest had 
stopped to ask his way in a genuine dilemma, or had 
made the time-worn excuse to finger, there was no doubt 
that he was regarding her now with a deliberate inten¬ 
tion that he would not have bestowed on a plain woman. 
And it was causing Lillias an unprecedented embarrass¬ 
ment. Many younger men, and with cruder good looks, 
had passed across her physical vision with no more 
effect upon her than they would have had upon a 
looking-glass. But her first suspicion of him, which 
seemed unfounded, was merging into a second that he 
was keeping her there whether she would or no, and 
making her uncertain of herself. 

“ It needs a lot of hard work and taking the risk/* 
she said more guardedly. “ And Mr. Daish’s neigh¬ 
bours prefer the old ways of their farms." 

“ That is very characteristic of the British farmer," 
said Colonel Thorne, laughing. When he laughed he 
seemed about five-and-thirty, as Sir Henry had said, 
in spite of grey hair and the fines in his face, and it 
startled Lillias afresh. She half turned as if to go 
back to the cottage, and he instantly leaned over the 
gate again, nearer to her. “ You have a wonderful 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE hi 


garden of your own/’ he said. “ I never saw finer 
hollyhocks.” 

“ They have done very well this year, but they will 
not last another.” 

“You have to take them up, don’t you, or they get 
diseased ? ” 

“ Yes, I think so.” She began to wonder helplessly 
if she would ever be able to leave him. Something 
seemed to be holding her there against her will-—or 
was it her will that was the traitor ? She liked his 
handsome face and his boyish laugh and his care¬ 
less, clean utterance, as she had liked no younger 
man’s. 

“ Is that pink feller fourteen feet high ? ” 

“ I don’t know, sir,” said Lillias, suddenly taking 
refuge in a form of address that thrust their social 
difference between them. “ I think about ten—I 
don’t know.” Her troubled eyes gave him one swift 
look as she drew back and forced her spellbound feet 
up the mossy path to the cottage. What had come to 
her ? How could a stranger’s eyes, intent though they 
were, threaten the barriers of her placid indifference ? 
His voice followed her up the path with a different 
note in it'—a lower and more dangerous note, though 
the words were nothing. 

“Can’t you spare one of the roses-—just one ? ” 

Lillias did not turn, but without the least intention 
on her part her hand shook the basket that held the 
flowers and a little red rambler dropped as if in answer 
to the request. Had she been the veriest coquette 
it could not have been better done, and her eyes filled 
with real and angry tears to hear the gate click behind 


112 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


her and to know that he had taken it as intentional 
and come into the garden to claim his flower. 

“ What must he think of me !—Sir Henry’s guest j 
and a London gentleman/’ said Lillias with genuine 
vexation. “ It was so unfortunate that the rose fell 
just then; no one would ever think that it was not on 
purpose.” 

And for hours afterwards her quiet ordered day was 
disturbed by a vision of the sunny garden, a gentleman 
in light tweed leaning over the gate, and the handsome, 
soldierly face under the golf cap. His steady eyes held 
her as no man’s had ever done before. And yet she 
did not know if he had deliberately sought the idle 
conversation through a passing admiration, or if some 
foolish blunder on her own part had seemed to encour¬ 
age him to that last swift whisper. For the first time 
in her uneventful life the long lashes shading Lillias’ 
lavender eyes hid a shamefaced sense of causing a man 
to misjudge her. 

Colonel Thorne daintily stripped the little red rose 
of its thorns as he walked on up the lane, and pulled 
it through the buttonhole of his jacket. It was 
drooping from the heat of the day already as he turned 
in at the gate of Leith farm and walked up the road 
between the hedge on one side and the old pond-basin 
on the other. He was an observant man who seldom 
or never exercised his brain with thought, which 
perhaps accounted for his alert look of youth. But for 
the time being he really did not see the low-roofed 
farmhouse in its setting of old trees, or the substantial 
buildings that flanked it, or the soft hazy view of the 
Surrey hills beyond. His eyes were still dazzled with 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 113 


the light and colour of a cottage garden, and a woman 
with bare soft arms and a face that satisfied every sense 
of beauty. He belonged to a generation that had read 
Tennyson, and though poetry was certainly not in 
his line, certain phrases and references had become 
almost like household words in his more receptive youth, 
and vaguely recurred to his mind. 

“ Half light, half shade. 

She stood, a sight to make an old man young 1 M 

Wasn’t that something about the Gardener’s Daughter? 
He remembered a picture in the Academy ages ago of 
a girl, with this quotation in the catalogue. It was 
a pretty picture—but not half so pretty as the one 
he had seen this morning. Perhaps the lady of the 
cottage was a gardener’s daughter. 

“ A single stream of all her soft brown hair 
Pour’d on one side-" 

Only it was golden, not brown, and in two great plaits. 
Good Lord ! What must it be like, unbound ! Her 
figure, too— 

“ And on the bounteous wave of such a breast 
As never pencil drew-” 

“ I’m growing maudlin in my old age,” said Colonel 
Thorne with a laugh. “ That girl is a topper, though. 
* A sight to make an old man young ’ ! ” And he 
sighed, half absently, as he knocked at the door in 
the porch of the farmhouse. 

It was opened to him by a blond giant of a man who 
he instantly surmised was the lavender farmer himself. 

H 




THE LAVENDER LAD 


114 

He had been somewhat prepared for John Daish’s 
personal beauty by his introduction to Lilli as, but he 
could not keep the admiration out of his keen, quick 
eyes as he looked up at the farmer. Most men had 
to look up at John, but it was rarely with resentment. 
His great gentleness seemed to detract in some way 
from his size, or to nullify its aggressiveness. 

“Mr. Daish ? " said Thorne pleasantly. “I’ve 
come over from the Place. Sir Henry is laid up w T ith 
the gout, poor fellow, and he wants to know if you will 
let me come over and shoot some of the rabbits/' 

“ I am very sorry to hear of Sir Henry’s gout/’ 
said John with simple sincerity. “ I knew of it from 
my cousin, who had seen his housekeeper, and I should 
have liked to ride over to inquire after him ; but last 
week was our busiest time/’ 

“ With the lavender ? I happened to ask my way 
here at the cottage, and your cousin—Miss Daish ?— 
told me you had been distilling. I wish I had been 
in time to see the whole process." 

“ I would have shown you with pleasure, sir. Will 
you step in a minute ? We are slack now in comparison 
to the last week or so ; but there’s always plenty to 
do on a farm." 

Colonel Thorne followed his host into the cool, 
panelled parlour, and threw his cap and gloves on to 
the table with an air of freedom and good fellowship 
that made him universally popular. He looked about 
the homely room with kindly appreciative eyes, and 
then at John again—and he remembered his swift 
suspicion that there was a romance between the 
woman at the cottage and this man with his bachelor 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 115 

farm. It seemed extremely likely and extremely 
repugnant both at once. And Colonel Teddy wondered 
what had come to him and why he was such an ass. 

“ What a delightfully cool room ! ” he said. “ Phew ! 
it’s hot walking to-day.” 

“ Yes, real August weather at last/’ smiled the 
farmer. " And we were having a frost at night a week 
ago. Will you have a glass of beer, or some cider, 
after your walk ? ” 

“ Mustn’t touch it,” laughed Colonel Thorne. “ I 
suffer from gout like Sir Henry if I am not careful. 
No, I won’t spoil my luncheon with anything, thanks.” 

“ Is Sir Henry very bad this time ? ” asked John 
with genuine concern. “ I heard he had a guest down, 
and was surprised not to see him out.” 

“ The poor fellow is regularly on the shelf. I 
don’t think he’ll put his foot to the ground for a 
month. Gout must run its course. He suggested our 
going out together—you and I, Mr. Daish. Do you 
think you will be able to manage it ? 

“ I hope so—yes, I think I can very well, if it is 
not a whole day’s shoot. When did Sir Henry suggest 
your coming over ? ” 

“ What about to-morrow ? There’s no time like 
the present.” 

“ Yes, to-morrow would suit me well. After lunch ? ” 

“ Won’t you come over and lunch with us ? ” 

The farmer hesitated. “ I think I had better say 
two o’clock or half-past, at our sixteen-acre field. 
I like to see my men started on the afternoon work.” 

“ Very well, Mr. Daish. We are only too glad to be 
able to get you. I hear you are a dead shot.” 


n6 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


" Yes,” said John simply. He did not deprecate 
the compliment at all, but took it with characteristic 
gravity. He had, as Sir Henry had said, made himself 
as perfect a shot as possible from humane reasons, 
and it never occurred to him to deny it. There was 
a certain broad matter-of-factness about the Daish 
family that almost made them seem like simpletons 
to more artificial minds. 

When Colonel Thorne rose up to go, after smoking a 
cigarette, he was on thoroughly good terms with his 
host; but he admired him physically much more than 
mentally, though he would have said of himself that 
he made no pretensions to be brainy. “ A good fellow, 
a trifle dull,” he could not help thinking. “ I wonder 
if she is in love with him. . . . Women are so easily 
taken by good looks. . . .” (He had personal ex¬ 
perience of this.) “ And she would not see that he 
was a bit heavy in hand, having no one to contrast 
him with. . . .” 

“ If you can wait till the horse is put in I can drive 
you back,” said the farmer as they stepped into the 
porch. “ I want to pass the gates of the Place, and 
it’s a hot walk over the roads.” 

Colonel Thorne was rather glad to accept, despite 
his desire for exercise, for beads of moisture hung on his 
forehead from the heat. While they waited for the 
dog-cart to come round Daish took his guest across 
the road and past the potato patch to see what was 
left of the lavender—the young plants of only one 
year's growth that had not yet been cut. It was a 
thinner cultivation than the great bushes in their 
prime, but even now there was enough blue haze of 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 117 

flowers and seeds to make Colonel Thorne exclaim in 
deli ght. 

“ The real show must be a wonderful bit of colour ! " 
he said. “ Do you do much replanting ? ” 

“ We replant every year—in November and on¬ 
wards/* said Daish. “ In some years it is well into 
September before we finish cutting/* 

Thorne looked over the dainty heads of the young 
plants which partially clothed the rolling hillside, 
and recognised the purple glow of a very late clump 
that had retained its flowers. They were the same 
colour as Lilli as’ eyes. No pansy in her garden, or 
bush of delphinium, so purely matched the iris as did 
her cousin’s lavender fields. 

“ I am glad I have seen it,” said Colonel Thorne 
almost absently as they turned away. 

The dog-cart was standing at the porch with a use¬ 
ful half-bred mare in the shafts and a heavy type of 
farm-labourer at her head. 

“ Where’s Charley ? ” asked Daish sharply as he 
took the reins. “ He always brings the cart round. 
It’s his work.” 

“ I haven’t set eyes on him for an hour, sir,” said 
the man. “ He fed the farm horses soon as they come 
in, and Jonah he gives a hand dressing ’em, becosit’s 
too much for the boy, and then *e say can *e get off to 
the pool.” 

“ All right,” said John shortly, and gave the mare 
her head; but there was a shadow on his fine face as 
they trotted up the hot Leith road, and neither man 
spoke for a few minutes. Thorne was looking for 
the point where he had left the lane, and wondering 


n8 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


if he could catch a glimpse of the patterned cottage 
tiles from here, and Daish was wondering what his 
protege was about, playing truant again. He dis¬ 
trusted those excursions to the bathing pool, except 
in the early morning for a bath. The boy was too 
venturesome, always up to mischief, with a monkey 
habit of climbing trees and hanging over the water. 
When he had deposited his guest at the gates of the 
Place and done his own errand at a neighbour’s farm, 
John drove half a mile out of his way to pass Charley’s 
favourite stream in order to see if he could catch the 
boy and take him home. The water broadened into 
the haunted pool some little distance from the rough 
byway over which John Daish was venturing his trap, 
and ran away under a slab of granite along the bottom 
of a neighbouring field. It w T as here that Charley 
bathed, and John had twice caught sight of him in the 
forked boughs of a beech that spread its branches over 
the meadow side of the water. But no boy was 
visible to-day, and it was not until he got back to the 
farm and was stabling his own mare (for the men were 
gone to dinner) that he heard anything of his tiresome 
favourite. 

Beyond the stables lay the stackyard, and here last 
year's and this year’s ricks were standing side by side. 
There were peas and beans and straw as well as hay, 
but the haystacks showed the greatest inroads into their 
sweet, compact bulk. All were thatched, last year’s 
ricks being in partial demolishment, and a quarter of 
one cut away so that it formed a shelf of the odorous 
substance. It was fenced in by hurdles to preserve 
it from the marauding attacks of envious stock, and 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 119 

as Daish came out of the stables he was surprised to 
see Hector leap over the protection and come towards 
him wagging his thick tail. Daish looked up at the 
rick to see what could have attracted the dog, 
and caught sight of a darker patch on the shelf of 
dun-coloured hay. Charley was lying up there resting 
on his knees and elbows, and very busy with something 
which seemed to have been worth the missing of dinner; 
and Hector no doubt had mounted guard, for his 
reconciliation to the boy had resulted in a jealous 
attendance on him. Daish drew nearer cautiously, his 
hand on the dog’s head to prevent his barking, though 
he had no intention of playing the spy, and to his 
amazement heard the boy talking to someone or some¬ 
thing that he caressed between his hands. His voice 
was almost crooning as he flattered it, and John, drawn 
up to his commanding height, became aware that what 
lay on the shelf between Charley’s elbows was a mass of 
wild flowers'—wild clematis and cow-parsley, the pink 
bindweed and yellow meadow rue—handfuls of them 
gathered from the meadows and hedges and brought to 
this hiding-place for some secret purpose or the fear 
of being twitted by the men. 

“ Now you lie there, and you there—you dear 
pretties ! ” John heard him say. There was neither 
Cockney accent nor slang in this voice that talked to 
the flowers. “It’s a shame to have taken you from 
the hedge where you were so happy, but I must have 
you—I must, must have you ! ” He bent his black 
head over the clematis and kissed the trailing sprays 
passionately. “ What do they call you in your flower 
world, my beauty ? We call you Travellers Joy, and 


120 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


that isn't pretty enough even. Look at this li’l 
golden fellow trying to reach you—give him a kiss 
then! ” The wild clematis and the meadow-rue 
touched and twined under the boy’s sunburnt hands. 
He w r as so absorbed by his flower-marriage that 
he never heard the farmer slip away with a 
flushed, excited face, leaving Hector once more on 
guard. 

“ Why,, the boy is a poet as well as an artist ! ” he 
said to himself. “ He is like some creature with two 
souls—one the cunning, lying little devil of the streets, 
and the other a pure thing strayed out of Paradise. 
Or is it that the beautiful soul is the real one, deep 
dowm in his nature, and merely overgrown by rough 
and ugly experiences of his life ? ” The blood in his 
veins tingled with resentment as he recognised that 
had one of the men overheard that conversation with 
the wild fknvers they would have ridiculed it to death ; 
or had Mrs. Skelton come upon her pet aversion un¬ 
perceived she w r ould have said he w r as touched—crazed 
—as well as depraved. Even Lillias w r ould have looked 
with sweet, uncomprehending eyes upon the strange 
thing, as unnatural and unboylike and in consequence 
to be deprecated rather than encouraged. Lillias 
w’as calmly literal and wdiolesomely normal. She 
did not divine genius in anything but the invention 
of the steam engine. It was the rebel spirit in John 
that rose up to hail an unexpected trait in the boy’s 
character. And his thoughts found expression almost 
in Biblical phrase as he w r ent back to the farmhouse 
parlour and brought his heavy hand down on the 
sturdy table as if to record a vow: 


A STRANGER LEANS OVER THE GATE 121 


“ I will be to him as a father, and he shall be to me 
as a son. For he has been sent to me to be the joy 
that I have missed in life, and I will secure to him that 
which I have lost ! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


BREATH OF EVIL 

i 

The sick lady at the vicarage did not get her roses the 
same day that they were cut under such embarrassing 
circumstances, but had to wait until the next morning. 

This was unlike Li Hi as Daish, who, if she did a 
kindness, did it “ with both hands earnestly ” as 
certain Biblical characters did evil. And it was not 
due to the apparition of Colonel Thorne in her life, 
either, though it was one that would not be laid like 
other vague ghosts of romance in her happy, useful 
days. Li Hi as would not have allowed herself to day¬ 
dream to the extent of forgetting the vicar’s wife’s 
request for some late roses for her sick friend ; or, 
rather,, a simple habit of duty and routine would have 
made it impossible for her. 

She had intended taking the flowers to Leith Vicarage 
in the later afternoon, when they had been some hours 
in water to strengthen them ; but at half-past two, 
when the midday meal was cleared away and the kitchen 
tidy, there was a loud and undeniable ring followed by 
a knock on the door of the cottage. For a minute 
Lilli as' heart did give a quickened beat, though the 
actual vision of Thorne did not form itself in her brain. 
It was only that her senses had been so unusually 


BREATH OF EVIL 


123 


roused to adventure that morning that they had not 
yet settled down to their normal quiet ; and it was 
with no more colour in her face than its soft sun¬ 
burn that she went herself along the little passage to 
the door, since the widow who worked for her was busy 
with her daughter Alice at the week’s wringing and 
ironing. 

In the doorway rather than outside the door stood 
a stout, fresh-coloured woman dressed in a showy coat 
and skirt whose bright violet was probably chosen to 
disguise its cut. On her head she wore an inexpensive 
hat with elaborate trimmings on the same principle, 
and indeed there was something cheap and tawdry 
about this visitor altogether, from her rubbed suede 
shoes to her handbag, which was imitation leather and 
looked like it. The encounter was such a contrast 
to the stranger who had leaned over the gate that 
morning that for a moment Li hi as was stricken dumb; 
and as she recovered herself in greeting her eyes did 
not smile, though her lips tried to do so. 

“ Cousin Sarah Anne ! Who would have thought 
to see you ? ” 

“ Not you, for sure, Lily, from the way you stare ! ” 
said the visitor with a rather strident laugh. “ And 
John Daish was no better when I saw him down at the 
farm—yes, I went to Leith first and left my basket, 
for he’s got to put me up to-night. That’s what I’m 
here for—to see John about those brewery shares of 
mine that his father put me into. The old man was 
the right business sort. John’s a fool compared with 
him, but I had to see him because I can't find some of 
the papers and I believe they’re at Leith.” 


124 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ Have you seen John ? ” asked Lillias, with inward 
sympathy for the farmer, who she knew to be busy with 
the corn harvest. 

“ Oh yes ; I had a bit of talk to him while he bolted 
his lunch'—you can't call it eating. I like to taste 
what goes into my mouth and give it a lick round 
before I swallow it. Then I thought I’d walk up here 
as Master John said he must go back to work, and oh ! 
the heat ! I'd have made him send me over in the cart 
if I’d remembered it was such a step.” 

All the while she was talking she was entering the 
cottage without further invitation from its mistress, 
making her way into the little sitting-room and taking 
off her fabric gloves with the “ suede finish.” Lillias 
followed her almost in silence. She and John Daish 
were clannish as regarded family ties, and staunch to 
the adage that blood is thicker than water. But this 
was the relative whom they liked least, and whose 
personality itself somewhat strained their loyalty. 
Cousin Sarah Anne had been Daish only on the mother's 
side, and had certainly more resembled her father. 
Furthermore she had married a publican, and though 
for some years a widow the faint glamour of the bar 
seemed yet to hang about her in her full-coloured dress, 
her decorative hat, her imitation handbag with the 
gilt clasp. Lillias' feeling of pity for John increased 
as she realised that he had been taken by storm in 
the first instance, and raided of hospitality. 

“ I know that John is very pressed in harvest time,” 
she said in quiet excuse. “ Will you take off your 
things upstairs in my room, Sarah Anne ? ” 

" Oh, don’t go calling me 4 Sarah Anne ' for all the 


BREATH OF EVIL 


125 


world like your mother used ! " exclaimed her guest 
impatiently. “ A woman doesn't want her christening 
thrown in her face every time you open your mouth. 
Call me Annie, as everyone else does—except you and 
John," she added resentfully, throwing her hat on 
to the table and her coat over a chair. “ I’m too hot 
to go toiling upstairs." 

“ Very well. But you will have something to eat 
and drink. Did they give you dinner at the farm ? " 

“ Mrs. Skelton saw to me nicely, thank you. But I 
could do with a glass of beer or cider—something 
cooling—and a bit of cake." 

Lillias went to fetch the glass of beer, that was not 
exactly a cooling drink for one of Cousin Anne’s 
build, and on returning found her putting her crimped 
hair in order before the oval glass in a frame with 
flowers and fruit raised in relief upon its border. 

“ I don’t believe you’ve changed a thing in this 
room since your mother died ! ’’ she exclaimed as she 
drank thirstily. “ Why don’t you get rid of all those 
ugly bits of furniture that don’t match, and get a suite, 
Lily. Something in painted walnut with red or green 
velvet, and a real up-to-date sideboard ? You can 
buy them cheap now, or you could get them by paying 
instalments." 

Lillias disliked being called Lily as much as the 
publican’s widow did being called Sarah Anne. But 
she did not say so. She reminded Mrs. Jennings 
instead that the furniture had been her mother’s and 
her grandmother’s, and she would not like to part 
with it. 

“ Such rummage ! " said Mrs. Jennings heatedly 


126 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


(the beer was not the best digestive for her, certainly). 
“ And John’s just as bad. Two stick-in-the-muds, I 
call you, and why you don’t get married, as you suit 
each other so well, passes me ! You’re getting past 
being a girl, you know, Lily, and the men won’t be 
coming round you so much as they used. Why d’you 
do your hair like that ? It’s not the way girls do now. 
Even I’m smarter than you are. My Vera and Olive 
wouldn’t stand me looking as you do ! ” 

There was a touch of bluster in this. In her mind’s 
eye she saw her two daughters, certainly very modern 
types with bobbed hair and bare necks and arms, for 
they were never out of the all-conquering “ jumper,” 
whether it were cotton or artificial silk. She honestly 
thought that Vera and Olive were as good-looking 
and attractive girls as could be, and yet there was a 
sting in Lilli as’ unresponsive silence. She knew 
that Lillias did not admire her younger cousins, though 
she had never said so ; she knew also that John Daish 
did not admire them either, and the mother in her 
resented it the more because both girls, and Olive 
especially, did admire him. Mrs. Jennings would 
have been satisfied to see Olive married to John Daish, 
who was inexplicably prosperous in spite of his unusual 
ways ; but she thought, like the rest of the world, that 
John wanted nobody but Lillias. 

What was the spell that Lillias cast over mankind ? 
She sat there with her unfashionable long hair plaited 
round her head in its richness and colour, with her 
womanly figure undisguised by the shapeless garments 
that Olive said were the only things to wear. Lillias 
was still in her overall, in which she had been washing 


BREATH OF EVIL 


127 


up the dinner plates and dishes, and neither excused 
nor altered it. Mrs. Jennings, glancingslightingly over 
the pretty face and figure, would fain have denied her 
any beauty, but that she found all her convictions 
disproved by experience with regard to Lillias Daish. 
Cousin Annie was one of those people who measure 
everything about a woman by a standard of men’s 
preference, and that was usually on the material side. 
“ Men don’t like a girl who can’t show herself ! ” she had 
said. “ Men don’t care for dullness'—men like a bit 
of freedom with women. Don’t be too sharp, Vera. 
Men will give you the go-by if they think you’ve got 
a tongue.” It was her objective, in moulding her 
daughters, that they should be the type of men’s 
desire, not only with the idea of settling themin life, 
but because she thought that success for women 
depended solely upon the opposite sex. 

“ How are Olive and Vera ? ” said Lillias, ignoring 
the ill-mannered allusions to John as the greatest 
lady in the land might do. 

“ As well as may be, racketing as they do. Girls 
nowadays get as much into a day as we did into a 
month. But you are the old type, Lily. I declare 
youmight be my age rather than mygirls’, and of course 
you are a bit older than Olive—I forgot that.” There 
was a hasty satisfaction in her tone to give Olive some 
advantage over her unconscious rival. “ Why, you 
must be thirty, quite. I remember when you were 
five, and I was a girl at school, myself. You were a 
pretty little thing then. I don’t mean that you’ve 
altogether lost your looks,” she added grudgingly, 
“ but you don’t make the most of them.” 


128 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ I have other things to think about since mother’s 
death.” 

“ Yes, it must be a bit of a shave for you; but I 
hear you get this house cheap, and I suppose John 
helps a bit, eh ? ” 

Then for the first time Lilli as flushed a clear, angry 
red. The frank impertinence of the suggestion touched 
her through all her simple acceptance of her relation’s 
inquiries into her affairs. Had it been kindly asked 
she would not have objected even to Annie Jennings’ 
prying, but it was no consideration for herself that 
prompted the odious question. Her full throat 
swelled a little and her corn-coloured head went up as 
she looked full at her visitor. 

“ John is very kind in sending things from the farm 
to me as he did to mother,” she said in curbed anger. 
“ But I have no need to ask money from him, and you 
know it. Mother had a bit of property in Carshalton 
that brings in a little, and I make something by the 
bees.” 

“ Well, you needn’t get so ugly about it, Lily. 
How red you are ! I’m sure John would be glad enough 
to give you half he makes, and himself into the bargain. 
I can’t for my life see what you are both waiting for, 
nor anybody else either.” 

“ John and I are not going to marry, Cousin Annie. 
The idea ! I suppose we may settle our own affairs. 
And I will thank you not to go talking of what is not 
your business.” 

Then there was still a chance for Olive! Mrs. Jennings 
was not sorry for having come within sight of a quarrel 
if she could assure herself that Lilli as was out of the 


BREATH OF EVIL 


129 


running. She did not, of course, believe that it was 
Lilhas who would not marry John if she got the 
chance. For some obscure reason John was keeping 
his cousin waiting while he made up his mind, and the 
real cause of Lilli as’ annoyance, to Mrs. Jennings* 
narrow mind, was that he would not “ come up to 
the scratch/* 

“ Well, I’m sure ! ** she said, thinking it her best 
policy to defend her position. “ A nice temper you’re 
showing. One can’t make a bit of a joke without 
your flying out like a screech-owl! And I should 
think it was anybody’s business in the family that 
you don’t get married, with all the talk about you and 
John ! ** 

“ There is no talk about me and John that you and 
others like you don’t make,” Lillias was stung to 
retort. “And it is my business and no one else’s whom 
I marry, Cousin Annie, so if you want to talk to me 

you’ll just please keep off that or I’ll ask you to 

_ >> 

§>°* 

The climax was unexpected, for Lillias’ enduring 
patience was counted upon by her relations. Mrs. 
Jennings did not want to miss a cup of tea and have to 
walk back to Leith farmhouse in the heat again, some¬ 
what in disgrace ; so she saw fit to apologise and to 
change the subject, though she took care to plant a 
sting in it if Lillias were vulnerable. 

“ Mrs. Skelton was telling me of this new craze of 
John’s for taking in some wretched child that he found 
in a ditch swarming with vermin.” (She used a more 
literal word.) “ He’s got a bee in his bonnet, as I 

always said. I’m sorry for Skelton. I’d get rid 

I 


130 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


of the dirty brat if I were her, if I had to give him a 
dose of rat poison ! ” 

" You are talking a great deal of nonsense/' said 
Lilli as with sudden coolness, her temper so much at 
white heat at last that it was like frost. “ Charley 
is farm-boy, and is quite clean and respectable now, 
and John can engage whom he pleases without reference 
to Mrs. Skelton, though I am sorry she so dislikes the 
boy.” 

" She told me that he stole, and lied, and played all 
sorts of filthy tricks, and John lets him do just as he 
likes. I should think there was a reason! ” She 
nodded her head with unclean meaning. “ Where 
did the brat come from ? Boys don't turn up suddenly 
unless they have some claim to come. You look to 
it, Lily, John knows more of this Charley’s parentage 
than he owns to ! ” 

The stare of Lilli as’ blue eyes was so amazed that 
even Mrs. Jennings was for a moment disconcerted. 
And, as before, she began to justify herself. 

“ Well, John’s not the first who’s had a boy he 
couldn’t own to ! You might be a baby with that 
stare-and-see-nothing look, Lily. Don’t be such a 
fool. John’s a young man without any wife of his 
own to go to, and of course he has a woman on the 
sly. I should say this had been going on for some years, 
and that’s why he daren’t marry. How old’s this 
boy ? ” 

“ Charley is fourteen or more. He is a little gipsy 
boy, who has been on the tramp all his life.” 

Lillias was shocked into the explanation, but the 
angry blood still burnt in her face and her heart raged 


BREATH OF EVIL 


131 

with anger for John. " Did you say all this to Mrs. 
Skelton ? ” she demanded. 

“ No, I never thought of it till now. But that’s it, 
you may depend. I’ll have a bit of a talk to her 
to-night-” 

" Annie Jennings, if you dare to say that kind of low 
evil of John, while you’re staying in his house, I’ll 
never speak to you again. And what’s more, I’ll go 
straight to John and tell him, and he’ll never speak to 
you either.” 

Lillias had risen. She was tall for a woman, and 
the little cottage parlour made her look still taller. 
Her eyes seemed to scorch Mrs. Jennings’ face, for it 
became more heated than the hot day and the beer had 
made it. Furthermore, the extreme probability of 
John’s doing exactly as Lillias had threatened filled 
her with dismay, for if John quarrelled with her, how 
was she to face Olive ? Mrs. Jennings had a whole¬ 
some fear of her daughters, if of no one else, and Olive 
had often rated her for her loose tongue. 

“ I won’t say a word if you don’t like it, Lily,” she 
said hastily, almost abjectly, in her desire to soothe 
the beautiful fury in Lillias’ eyes. “ Of course I 
don’t want to make mischief. It was out of feeling 
for you that I was angry with John. Some low woman 
got hold of him years ago, you may be sure, when he 
was only a lad, and she’s kept him single, and forced 
him to take the kid off her hands at last. It’s a shame ! 
But there, we won’t talk of it any more, and I promise 
you I’ll shut my mouth to Skelton.” 

She was as good as her word as far as her stay at 
the cottage went, and Lillias knew that if she broke it 



132 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


with regard to Mrs. Skelton, she herself would soon 
hear of it and could set matters straight. But the 
glory of the day had departed, and it seemed to her 
that Cousin Sarah Anne had poisoned the atmosphere 
even after her warm violet figure had marched out 
of the garden gate and faded from the restful green 
lane. 

For a minute Lillias stood in the porch thinking, 
after her visitor had departed, and her thoughts were 
unusual ones, for they were less of John than of herself, 
though she resented the treachery of Mrs. Jennings 
accepting his hospitality and returning it with vile 
suspicions. The disadvantage of relationship had 
never forced itself upon Lillias’ mind so much before. 
There had always been the decent pride in the Daishs 
that lurks in so many yeoman families who never mis¬ 
take themselves for the “ gentry,” but know themselves 
as something very different to the lower middle-class 
of town-bred vulgarity. Now it seemed suddenly that 
she was linked up with them, indisputably connected. 
She thought of the contrast between her afternoon 
visitor and the one of the morning . . . and she realised 
with a stab that Sarah Anne Jennings was blood kin 
to her, and had a rightful place in her life, while the 
stranger who leaned over the gate was so remote that 
she could only vaguely conjecture of his personality. 
Yet of one thing she was certain—that he would have 
been incapable of the vulgarity of Mrs. Jennings’ 
attack both upon John and herself, and that in his world 
people “ assumed a virtue if they had it not ” and 
respected the courtesies of life. 

Having been prevented going to Leith Vicarage the 


BREATH OF EVIL 


133 


same day that she cut her roses, Lillias started early 
the next morning to save their freshness. Her walk 
was through the leafy lane up which Colonel Thorne 
had penetrated a little way beyond the cottage, and 
led her past some of Sir Henry’s land, and by a short 
cut across the fields to another lane behind the church. 
It was an old structure with a squat tower and a clock 
that never seemed to keep time, and it was so familiar 
to Lillias from a very early age that even the sagging 
tombstones in the rank grass seemed familiar friends. 
The vicarage was a straight-fronted, red brick house 
built in the days of Queen Anne or the first George, 
and as Lillias walked up the mossy path with its yew 
trees clipped into strange shapes, she saw between the 
green peacocks that the sick lady for whom she had 
brought her flowers had been carried out under the 
cedar tree on the lawn, and was lying on her couch. 
She was not only an invalid, she was lame and 
slightly deformed, and Lillias hardly hesitated 
before she turned aside and went straight over to 
the encampment under the tree, basket in hand. 
For as the sick lady could not come to her, it seemed 
to her naiural and. best to save her calling a 
servant. 

“ Mrs. Hetley asked me to bring over some of our 
late roses,” she said, setting the basket on the table by 
the couch. “ I hope you will enjoy them. I come 
from the cottage in Leith Lane.” 

The sick lady had a little pinched face beneath 
broad brows that suggested intellect, and shrewd eyes 
that suggested knowledge of life. She had been 
reading Hardy’s " Far from the Madding Crowd,” 


134 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


and had just reached the scene where the young soldier 
first sees the heroine by lamplight. “ Thank you for 
a sight of such a beautiful face ! ” he said. The sick 
lady felt rather as if the words ought to find expression 
on her own lips as she turned the roses out of Lillias' 
basket. 

“ I am very grateful for them,” she said, touching 
the flowers with her small cramped fingers as if she 
loved them. “ I do not know where Mrs. Hetley is 
just at the moment. She is a very busy woman. 
Do you want to see her ? ” 

“ Oh no—I hoped it might save taking up her time 
if I brought the flowers straight to you. May I take 
back the basket ? ” 

“ Yes, do. And will you also tell the gardener 
there to send for a bowl of water from the house for 
them ? You see, I cannot very well get up, and he is 
out of earshot.” 

“ Yes, of course,” said Lillias readily, but having 
delivered her message to the gardener she came back 
to the couch as if drawn by some subtle attraction. 
The sick lady was arranging her roses in a contrast of 
harmonious colours, and handling them as tenderly 
as though they were children. Lillias handled flowers 
carefully too, but that was because they were less 
marketable if they lost their petals or got their stalks 
broken. She was vaguely aware that this was a more 
personal matter. 

“ I am always so glad to see the roses, and to smell 
them,” said the sick lady, and her voice was quite 
cheerful, though her next words struck Lillias with 
sadness. “ Every year I wonder if I shall live long 


BREATH OF EVIL 


135 

enough to see them again. I understand so well the 
writer who said : 

* I shall not see another spring come sweeping up the world 1 * 

with a little regret in the resignation/' 

“ Oh, but you must not think it is as bad as that," 
said Lilli as reassuringly. “ If you look forward to 
seeing them next year it will do you so much more 
good than expecting not to ! " 

The sick lady looked up into the kind, uncomprehend¬ 
ing face with her shrewd eyes, and smiled. “ Perhaps 
you are one of those very much alive people who do 
not like to think that they must die," she said. “ I 
am not. To me, death is only the capacity for infinite 
rest." Her eyes wandered away from Lilli as in her 
still, material beauty, to the vista of the vicarage 
orchard where the further trees died out in a haze of 
shimmering heat. 

“ I suppose I am very much alive," said Lilli as 
simply. “ I have such good health." 

“ That makes for happiness, and it is natural that 
you should not think of rest as yet, because you do 
not need it. You have a good many years before you, 
I expect. And I hope," she added, touching the 
roses, “ that they will all be as full of kindness as your 
walk over here this morning." 

“ Why, that was nothing—a few flowers! Of 
course I was pleased to bring them when Mrs. Hetley 
spoke of it. I wish I could do more for you." 

“ Will you tell me your name ? " said the sick lady 
thoughtfully. 


136 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ I am Miss Daish—Lilli as Daish.” There was a 
certain unconscious dignity in the “ Miss ” born of 
Cousin Sarah Anne's ill-breeding yesterday. 

“ Then, Miss Daish, do let me remind you (it is only 
reminding, for I am sure you know) that it is the little 
things of life that count, the patience that remembers 
to do a small kindness instead of thinking it not worth 
while, the everyday monotony of duties that don’t 
make a splash. Just as it is the little stings and jibes 
that hurt the most,” she added significantly. 

Lilli as’ face suddenly woke into the comprehension 
it had lacked. She could understand that from her 
experience of yesterday, for she had a slow mind that 
needed a literal example to make her intuitive. The 
sick lady’s quiet eyes read the lightening of the 
beautiful face, and she said to herself : “ Is it possible 
that anyone can be mean enough to stab and pinprick 
this simple, generous woman ? I could turn knight- 
errant for her.” 

“ Some folks seem to like being unkind ! ” said 
Lilli as blankly, but with a subdued indignation. 

“ Poor souls ! ” answered the sick lady quickly. 
“ It must be dreadful for them, mustn’t it ? ” 

“ For them ? ” 

" Oh yes. Do think how cramped and petty their 
minds must be, and how evil. Do you know, Miss 
Daish, I always think of evil like a very bad smell. 
People whose minds are impregnated with it must 
be living in a kind of moral sewer.” 

Lilli as opened her lavender-coloured eyes for a 
minute, and then she laughed her pretty, gurgling 
laugh, The shadow seemed to pass from her with that 


BREATH OF EVIL 


137 


gurgle of merriment, and the unhappy impression of 
Cousin Sarah Anne’s rudeness. After all, it was 
nothing but a bad smell. What a funny idea ! She 
looked down at the sick lady, and wondered. And 
then, before they could say more to each other, the 
vicar’s wife appeared, garden scissors in hand, and 
introduced a practical mixture of thanks and theology 
which seemed her element. 

“ My dear Lillias, how good of you to come over 
so early when I know you are busy with the house and 
your little garden. The vicar wants to know if you 
can pour out tea at the Mothers’ Meeting; and the 
lesson for Sunday School is altered to Matthew—not 
Hebrews.” 

“ What have the Hebrews done ? ” asked her sick 
friend quaintly. “ Are they not fit for infant minds ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know—we thought St. Matthew more 
suitable.” Mrs. Hetley hardly paused before she 
added : “ You are almost in the sun, Anstice ! I will 
call the gardener to move you ”—and the sick lady's 
eyes twinkled with a humour known neither to her 
own friend nor to Lillias. 

“ More little knidnesses, you see, Miss Daish! ” she 
said, as Lillias took up her basket to depart, having 
assured the vicar’s wife that she would pour out tea 
for the mothers and remember the lesson for the infants. 
“ Good-bye, and thank you once more for your roses.” 

She held out her delicate hand and laid it in Lillias’ 
warm strong one for an instant, and her eyes followed 
the white-gowned figure out of the gate with a musing 
expression. 

“ Is not that a pretty girl ? ’’said Mrs. Hetley, seeing 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


138 

whither her friends eyes had wandered. “ I so much 
wanted you to see her. They are quite a handsome 
family. She has a farmer cousin just like herself whom 
we all think she ought to marry. They are not first 
cousins, of course/' 

“ My dear Meg, you need not assure me of that in a 
clergyman’s family! ” said Anstice, laughing. “ It 
is the one piece of common sense that you somehow 
confound with the rubric. But I do not call her a 
pretty girl-” 

“ Not ? I thought you could not help admiring 
her—you, who are so artistic. She has such rich hair 
—so sensibly done, too. I am quite disappointed.” 

“ She is not a girl at all,” said the sick lady quietly. 
“ She is a woman—and I think a good one ; and her 
face is something much more than pretty. I felt as 
if I must say with Hardy's hero, ‘Thank you for a 
sight of such a beautiful face ! ’ ” 

“ Oh, well then, I forgive you,” said the vicar’s wife 
gaily. “ And you are right about her character. She 
is really very nice, and so contented with her station 
in life and all that ! ” 

Lillias had not felt very contented with her station 
in life the previous afternoon when Cousin Sarah Anne 
was making all her world sordid with insinuations. 
She had felt as if she hated family ties and were 
decidedly discontented with her lot. But this morning 
it was different. The cloud seemed to have lifted as 
she walked to the vicarage on her kindly errand—the 
little kindness about which people will not trouble, as 
the sick lady had said. And as to Mrs. Jennings’ 
evil speaking, what was it ? Nothing but a bad smell! 



BREATH OF EVIL 


139 


Lilli as laughed again at the simile, but wondered, with 
an unusual stretch of imagination for her, if all evil 
were not, after all, like something repugnant to the 
senses if it were materialised ? The devil, could one 
face him in reality, would be simply discordant to the 
ears, loathsome to the sight, sickening to the smell, 
so that he might well produce nausea rather than the 
secret hero-worship that people are apt to give him. 
“ The devils a gentleman,” “ Lucifer, son of the 
morning,” were all very well; but, after all, evil was 
nothing but a bad smell. 

She had turned aside from the churchyard and walked 
into the village for a trifling errand before going 
home, when she saw to her surprise her cousin’s bicycle 
leaning outside the little post-office. She felt sure 
it was John’s because of the electric lamp that she had 
given him as a present on his last birthday. It was 
very seldom that John rode down into the village at 
this hour of the day, when harvest was on. As she 
paused, the boy Charley came out of the post-office, 
and seizing the machine was just going to mount and 
ride off when Lillias laid her hand on his arm. 

“ Wait a minute, Charley,” she said. “ I want to 
send a message to the farm. Is Mrs. Jennings still 
there ? ” 

The boy jerked his shoulder away guiltily, and 
seemed half inclined to mount and fly. But something 
seemed to check him, or else he changed his mind, 
for he stood still, though he answered sullenly: 

“ I dunno. Is that the one ’00 come yesterday ? 
'Er in the saucy violets what don’t fit ’er ? ” 

Lillias struggled with herself not to smile. A new 


140 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


feeling of sympathy and liking for the boy rose in her, 
partly in revolt from Mrs. Jennings’ ugly suggestions, 
and partly from the fact that Charley had obviously 
judged her and found her wanting. 

“ Yes, she was wearing a violet coat and skirt,” she 
said, mastering her amusement but showing one faint 
dimple. “ Has she left Leith, Charley ? ” 

“ The old tart ’opped it early,” said Charley with 
an accession of his worst slang. ” The guv’nor don’t 
like ’er, spite of her reach-me-downs and ’er suede 
tootsies ! ” 

" Air. Daish wouldn’t like you to talk like that,” 
said Lillias, becoming grave without an effort. “ And 
he would not let you speak disrespectfully of any of 
his relations.” 

For a minute Charley looked puzzled, almost 
startled. 

“ She’s not an aunt, or a sister, is she ? ”he demanded. 

“ No, a cousin—a second cousin or third to both of 
us—I don’t quite remember,” said Lillias, though it 
was no business of the boy’s. 

“ Thought she couldn’t be much to the guv’nor— 
nor you neither,” said Charley with a queer uplook in 
his black eyes. “ What’s the message ? ” 

” Tell Air. Daish that they have no self-raising flour 
In the village and I would be obliged to him to bring 
me some from Guildford wdien he’s over.” 

Charley did not answer for a moment. He wheeled 
the bicycle into the road and seemed to think that he 
was going to walk with Lillias part of her w r ay. She 
fell into step beside him, wondering what was going 
on inside the round black head, and recognising an 


BREATH OF EVIL 


141 

odd attraction in the boy for the first time. He looked 
much more decent and self-respecting in Leslie's 
clothes, as she had said he would, and though he wore 
no hat he might have been one of the villagers’ sons, 
save for his gipsy colouring. 

They had passed the church and recrossed the fields, 
Charley wheeling the bicycle while Lillias held open 
the gates for him, when he looked up at her with sudden 
confidence. 

“ If I give your message about the flour, I’ll have to 
say I’ve bin to the village,” he said. 

Lillias looked at him in surprise, for she had 
imagined that he had been sent on an errand from the 
farm. 

“ Well, why not ? ” she asked. 

“ The guv’nor doesn’t know. I pinched his bike 
and rode in. Wanted some tuck,” said Charley glibly. 

“ Where did you get the money to buy sweets ? ” 
asked Lillias gently, knowing that Charley only worked 
for bed and board as yet. 

“ A chap give me a tanner for taking a stone out o’ 
the ’orse’s ’oof,” said Charley. “ I learned ’ow with 
Em’rald and Ruby. It was away on the Leith road— 
not near the farm.” He spoke quite readily, and his 
story was feasible ; and yet Lillias, not suspicious by 
nature, fancied that he was lying. 

“ But you can’t buy sweets at the post-office, 
Charley.” 

“ No, I went in there for a bit o’ stamp paper.” 

Again this was credible, because boys were always 
after stamp paper, though what they used it for 
Heaven knew. Perhaps the fact that they could get 


142 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


it for nothing was the attraction. Yet Li 111 as kept a 
troubled silence. 

“ Are you going to split on me ? ” said Charley. 

“ No—but I don’t want you to do it again. Will 
you promise not to ? ” 

" I must do it again,” said the boy with unexpected 
honesty. “ I’ve got to get into Leith sometimes. 
Can’t tell you why. But if you don’t split we’ll be 
pals ! ” 

A guilty sense of entering into a league that did not 
even include John beset Lillias ; but the odd fascina¬ 
tion of the boy flattered her with a confidence from 
him. After all, she supposed that like other boys he 
wanted to be off on some adventure, silly enough but 
so trivial as to be harmless ; or, as he averred, merely 
to buy ” tuck,” or marbles. The life on the farm was 
dull enough after his experiences of tramping, and 
she made a pretty shrewd guess that John himself 
would shut his eyes to Charley’s cool appropriation of 
his bicycle as long as he could. 

“ Well—I won’t tell on you, Charley ! ” she said 
half reluctantly. “ But I don’t think you’re doing 
right by my cousin after all his kindness to you.” 

Charley’s mobile face twisted with a sudden spasm, 
and to her surprise his black eyes looked almost tragic. 
Her shot had gone home, though it was aimed at 
random. 

“ I know,” he said in a shaken voice. “ I know it 
seems a low-down trick. But there’s someone—some¬ 
one I must let know where I am ! ” The words seemed 
to be forced out of him, and the tragic eyes held Lillias' 
defiantly. “I’m doing no harm—’pon my sacred 


BREATH OF EVIL 


143 

oath I ain't—and I won't hurt the bike. I'm trusting 
you. Don’t tell even the guv’nor." 

“ Why, Charley! " The sudden revelation of the 
boy's having after all connection with human beings 
somewhere came rather as a relief than otherwise to 
Lillias. At least it suggested gratitude, or the fealty 
to some former tie, and her eyes were very kind and 
more pitiful as she looked down into the tense face at 
her side. “ You can trust me," she said kindly. 
“ I shan't even tell John. Is it someone who wants 
you ?—who is looking for you ? " 

“ No," said the boy curtly. “ But if they know I'm 
all right they'll let me alone." 

“ You don’t want to go back to them, Charley ? " 

“ I won’t ! " said the boy fiercely, his little white 
teeth biting his lip so that the blood came. “ I’m 
going to stop on at Leith. Dunno why I told you so 
much—but you look as if you’d keep faith." 

“ I’ll keep faith, Charley—and I’ll be your friend 
when you want one," Lillias said with another of 
those unusual impulses. The boy looked at her with 
an expression she had never seen in eyes before-—a 
touching gratitude that was half wild and half timid, 
like a stray dog’s. Then he had jumped on the bicycle, 
and was off down the lane, so quickly that it seemed 
but a whirr and glitter of the wheels lost in the leafy 
bend of the road. 

Lillias went home much happier than she had gone out. 
The sick lady at the vicarage had proved the oft- 
quoted fines : 

“ Thou shalt be served thyself with every act 
Of service which thou renderest 1 ** 


144 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


and she felt as if she had gained a ragged heart in 
Charley's pact of friendship. She would have been 
still more touched and amazed if she had known that 
from that hour the boy was often prowling round her 
cottage, though unseen by her, setting himself a kind 
of watch-dog guardianship over her as if he were another 
Hector. If he saw her at work in the garden or with the 
bees, he stole away well content, and he never again re¬ 
sented her visits to Leith farm. But that very afternoon 
-—the same day that Lillias had met him in the village— 
he saw something that brought a watchful look to his 
eyes and dissatisfaction to his quick mind in his new 
liking for her. 

It was half-past four or five, and Charley, having 
had his tea, played truant again and wandered across 
the fields to the cottage, going by a zig-zag route of 
his own that did not show him on the road at all. He 
was hidden in the brushwood of the trees opposite 
to Lillias’ garden, when he saw a figure coming down 
the lane which passed the cottage gate, stop, and un¬ 
latch it with deliberate intent. This was no messenger 
from the farm, or one of the young men of the 
neighbourhood who sometimes made sheepish errands 
in the forlorn hope of disturbing Lillias’ placid in¬ 
difference. It was not even a chance tourist or a 
stranger on a walking tour. The easy, athletic figure 
with its inimitable air of smartness was the same that 
had leaned over the gate the day before, though Charley 
did not know that; but he had seen Sir Henry’s guest 
at Leith farm, himself hidden, and he lay close in the 
brushwood and watched. 

Colonel Thorne walked straight up to the cottage 


BREATH OF EVIL 


145 


door and rang the bell. He was fertile in excuse, but 
the plausible speech he had meant to make died on 
his lips as Lillias herself opened the door and looked 
at him with an unconscious welcome in her deep- 
coloured eyes. She had never expected to see him 
again, unless by chance he drove by in the car from 
the Place ; she had schooled herself not to think any 
more of a man out of her world and the witness of a 
blunder on her part when she had dropped the rose. 
And behold ! here he was again, debonnair, handsome, 
different from any man she had ever seen, and making 
her heart leap with surprise that was almost fear and 
quite pleasure. 

In his coat was a little faded red rose that had once— 
alas !—been sweet. 

“ Miss Daish, I wonder if you would give me a cup 
of tea ? ” said the charming voice that she had tried 
so hard to forget. “ I’ve had such a long tramp, and 
it’s so dull at the Place with Sir Henry still laid up ! ” 

His delighted eyes took note of the flush in her face 
without guessing its cause. And indeed if men could 
know the real reason for a woman’s blush they might 
very often suffer from hurt vanity. Lillias was 
thinking of yesterday’s visitation, and what this very 
smart gentleman would think of Cousin Sarah Anne 
Jennings. She remembered with relief that that 
lady—in the “ saucy violets ! ”—was no longer at 
Leith farm, and could not suddenly appear upon her 
horizon. The flush was for Cousin “ Annie ” rather 
than for Colonel Thorne ; but he could not know that. 

“ Will you walk in ? ” she said simply, and for the 

first time Ted Thorne stepped over the threshold 

K 


146 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


and became her guest. They passed beyond the 
jealous range of those black eyes watching from the 
brushwood over the road, and Charley drew a panting 
breath. 

“ I’ll keep an eye on your doings ! ” he apostrophised 
the inward vision of Colonel Thorne in his tweed 
knickerbockers and well-cut coat. “ She’s too good 
for you—too good for an idle hour, as the others in 
your life have never been ! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


TELLING THE BEES 

At the bottom of Lillias Daish’s back garden was a row 
of neat boxes on small wooden stands, which supplied 
the staple commodity she took to market, for the 
vegetables, plentiful though they were, were not more 
than would supply her little household and leave some¬ 
thing over for a neighbour. 'She sold her eggs when 
her hens were laying and other people's were not, and 
she had a great and serious desire for a pig to fatten for 
market if she had only a little more ground for a pig- 
stye. But bee-keeping and the sale of honey had been 
a success from the first in Lillias' hands, and even 
while she was a girl at school she could always manage 
the bees better than anyone else when at home for 
her holidays. Of all God’s creation the bees have 
perhaps the strongest prejudices and affinities, and 
need the most sympathetic handling. Something in 
Lillias' quiet, almost ruminating nature must have 
appealed to the highly-strung colonies, for she could 
handle a swarm without protection, whereas neither 
gloves nor veil would prevent her cousin John from 
being badly stung. No one but Lillias could clip the 
queen’s wings, that she might not fly, without bruising 
her, nor gather the agitated swarm when they found 
that their lady was not with them; and she carried a 

147 


148 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


" cage ” in her pocket as naturally as other women do 
a powder-puff. As far as her means allowed her, 
Lilli as kept her apiary on the most approved modern 
methods, doubling her stocks, adding supers during the 
main flow of honey, and giving generous allowance of 
artificial pollen for the brood raising; but her house 
was, after all, only a keeper’s cottage with a strip of 
garden attached, and she could not have lived by bee¬ 
keeping unless she had launched out in a much larger 
way. She was fortunate in having much clover in 
her neighbourhood, and all Sir Henry’s rich orchards 
for her bees to roam over in spring. 

The old straw hives would have been far more 
picturesque in conjunction with Lilli as as bee-keeper, 
but the modern boxes were not by any means ugly, 
with their low-sloping roofs and odd angles. Lillias 
was so often with her bees that it was nothing unusual 
to find her down at the hives one afternoon, about a 
week after Colonel Thorne discovered her in the front 
garden ; but what was unusual was a certain self- 
consciousness in her manner, a quick turn of the corn- 
coloured head that was almost afraid of being watched. 
If such a word could be applied to her, one might have 
said that her approach to the hives was stealthy; 
but it was much more suggestive of a girl's shame lest 
she should be found out in something silly. And yet 
Lillias was seldom silly. She might be dull, as John 
in his impatience had thought her with regard to 
Charley; she might be a little obtuse, but she 
was too dignified for ridicule. 

She went up close to the hives—closer than anyone 
who had the least fear of being stung would have gone. 


TELLING THE BEES 


149 


but she knew which were the wicked hives as well as 
the good, though even the wicked ones could not harm 
her much, since she had long ago grown immune to 
the poison of the stings, as bee-keepers do. Bending 
down her golden head she whispered something into 
the entrance of the first, and from this she passed down 
the row, but did not pause to make any examination 
or to interfere wi th the business of the colonies. Certain 
strains are apt to swarm too often and needed watch¬ 
ing, for Lilli as looked upon her bees, unconsciously, as 
many people do upon nations. Those which had the 
colonising instinct might be likened to the British; 
those like the Americans would not swarm at all, but 
being a business community produced the more honey ! 
From the depth of the hives came the sense rather than 
the sound of life—an intimation to Lillias* trained ears 
that the work of the supers and sections was going on 
as usual; but she was not really listening to what her 
bees were saying or doing to-day, for she v r as too 
engrossed in what she had to say to them. Some 
communication of deep importance to herself she 
must certainly have had to make, or her practical 
common sense would never have allowed her to resort 
to the old superstition amongst country folic of “telling 
the bees ” when an event took place in the lives of 
their owners. Lilli as knew, and had laughed tenderly 
over it, that her mother before her had “ told the bees ” 
of her own birth ; and she remembered one of her 
aunts insisting on repeating the ceremony when her 
mother died. But until now r she had, herself, had 
nothing of such deep import in her life that she had 
told it to her bees. 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


150 

As she reached the last hive someone came to the 
back of the cottage and made a signal to her, and 
Lillias sprang to her feet with her face flaming. She 
hurried down the garden path between the neat rows 
of late peas and little round gooseberry bushes, to dis¬ 
cover that old David Adam had brought over a load 
of wood from the farm to the cottage, for it was a 
tradition at Leith that the ruling Daish should supply 
his kinsman or kinswoman with such necessities as 
he had and they had not. The old man was not of 
much use in corn harvest, and filled his time with 
spare jobs on the farm, and errands such as the fuel 
for Lillias' fires. He unloaded somewhat stiffly, and 
handed the young lady a substantial basket as well, 
containing early apples and pears—for the cottage had 
no orchard of its own—a junket made by Mrs. Skelton 
herself for her favourite, and some pounds of pale golden 
butter. 

“ Thanks, David—tell Mr. John how very welcome 
the wood is, for we have nearly run short. And 
thank Mrs. Skelton for me, though I always feel 
that we ought not to have so much butter when 
many of the cottagers cannot afford to buy it at 
all." 

Lillias had regained her self-possession, and the 
red blood in her face had faded again, leaving nothing 
but the slight sunburn in her ripe face that came of 
hours spent upon the vegetable garden, where her 
strong young arms had done their fair share of the 
work. Whatever it was that she had told the bees 
was a secret between her and them. Old Adam 
raised his bent back from storing the last of the wood, 


TELLING THE BEES 


151 

and pushed his cap back on his scanty grey hair to 
gaze at her with respectful admiration. 

“ Well, there’s a-many tilings as we oughtn’t to 
’ave since the war, miss,” he said slowly. “ But thank 
God we do! ” he added w r ith more cheerfulness than 
principle. 

Lillias w r as almost betrayed into a laugh, though her 
sense of humour was not a keen one as a rule. She 
shook her bright head a little with an indulgent smile 
at the old man, and called her little housemaid to 
bring him a glass of ale before he drove his team soberly 
back to the farm. It was a still, hot afternoon, and 
the bees were droning happily amongst the flush of 
bloom in the front of the cottage, too contented with 
their store to go further afield. Lillias had come 
round to the porch to speak to David, and for a few 
seconds more she stood there looking out over the 
happy, slumberous day with musing eyes and a vaguely 
happy curve to her lips as if there were a new joy 
stirring her quiet heart. Yet Lillias Daish was not 
given to day-dreaming, any more than she was to 
the superstitious custom of “ telling the bees ” her 
secret desires, for luck. The clatter of cups and 
saucers from the kitchen roused her with a sudden 
start to her own unusual absent-mindedness, and she 
flushed that beautiful red again that was quite wasted 
on the empty afternoon. 

“ Half-past four, and tea not laid yet! Mrs. Smith 
will think me crazy,” she reproached herself, and 
turned inside the cottage to undertake her own duties 
and leave the widow Smith and her daughter to the 
rougher work. Yet even while she laid the table in 


*52 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


the parlour with an embroidered cloth bought in the 
market town, and loaded it with too much home-made 
cake and jam for one, there was a shamed conscious¬ 
ness still about her. The vain little tea-cloth would 
have betrayed her if the extra preparations for a 
possible visitor had not done so. Would he come to¬ 
day ? He had said it was so dull up at the Place now 
Sir Henry had been forced to lay up entirely, and indeed 
it did seem a very dull visit for a gentleman who 
was used to all the distractions of London, and of 
course had hosts of friends. Ah! that was the 
depressing point in the argument. Why should a 
gentleman with hosts of friends in his own world find 
anything to attract him in the little cottage parlour 
and the homely tea—even with the vain little tea-cloth 
and the pretty tea-set that mother had kept so jealously 
—or the society of a farmer’s daughter ? It must bore 
him, even though his manner was too perfect to 
betray it. No, he would not-—could not-—come 
to-day ! . . . . 

As he had come every afternoon since his first 
introduction to her amongst the flowers, and had coaxed 
her into permission to invite himself to tea whenever 
he could slip across Sir Henry’s park, a greater coquette 
than Lillias might have been hypocritical in her doubt. 
But though she was aware of her own beauty and its 
weight with men, Lillias Daish was too broad-minded 
to be vain. She saw certain things in just proportion, 
and her own station in life and temperament were 
amongst them. Her cousin John might attract Sir Henry 
and his friends—they liked shooting with John, she 
knew. But John had always been able to hold his 


TELLING THE BEES 


153 


own socially from the days of the " good schooling/' 
and the education of which he had taken full advantage. 
Lilli as had learned more domesticity than book-lore, 
and baked bread better than she spoke French. 

It did not occur to her that a man like Colonel 
Thorne may be even less educated than the yeomanry, 
despite a public school. After he left Sandhurst, Colonel 
Teddy made haste to forget all that his profession 
did not enforce on his mind by daily practice ; and 
since he had retired from the army he had studied 
little but the racing news and the rules of golf. Women 
with far more intellectual claims to an equality than 
poor Lilli as had forgiven Colonel Teddy his limita¬ 
tions for the sake of his gay, charming manner, his 
real kindliness of heart, and the lovable nature that 
made him and his nephew and namesake, Eddy 
Thorne, a snare to anything at all feminine. 

The kettle was boiling and the tea had waited to 
be made for a half-hour before the garden gate clicked 
and Lilli as' heart seemed to click in response. Colonel 
Thorne had said that he would come at half-past four, 
but he was generally late for appointments, and beauti¬ 
fully turned out when he appeared. He could no 
more have hurried and been slovenly and heated in 
consequence than he could have walked into a room 
before a woman with his hat on. Both actions were 
disrespectful to a lady—and, besides, he trusted un¬ 
consciously to personal appearance to make a good 
impression. Perhaps he was not far wrong, since a 
woman's thoughts of a man are apt to resemble a 
looking-glass. 

“ I’m so awf’ly sorry, my dear—I didn't mean to be 


i54 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


late/' he said, holding his hostess’s hand and looking 
into her unruffled face with ardent eyes. Colonel 
Thorne called most women " my dear,” from those 
who doted on him under coronets to the waitress who 
made him her special charge in a restaurant. Lillias 
showed neither resentment nor embarrassment. The 
kind, fair face was its own best defence in that it 
betrayed nothing but its kindness and fairness. It 
was only the bees who were in her confidence. 

“ I was just going to have some tea, if you will 
share it,” she said, and put the newly-brewed beverage 
on the table, having just had time to fly into the kitchen 
and make it between the click of the garden gate 
and his entrance. 

“You haven’t waited for me ? I shall never forgive 
myself if you have ! ” 

" I was a little later to-day. A load of wood came 
over from the farm, and I had to see it stacked.” 
Lillias’ womanhood demanded the self-excuse of the 
white lie and justified it. 

“ Your cousin sent it over ? ” he said, very quickly 
jealous, though his reason had told him a dozen times 
that there was no sentiment between the comely 
Daishs. 

“ John is very good in supplying us with anything 
from Leith. He always did so while my mother lived, 
and he does it for me,” said Lillias simply. 

“ I like Daish awf’ly,” Colonel Thorne admitted, 
though he almost wished at the moment that he did 
not like the lavender farmer, since he could send welcome 
gifts to the cottage. “ I wish I could have had another 
day or so with the rabbits. Is the corn harvested yet. ? ” 


TELLING THE BEES 


155 


“ Yes, with the exception of the Takings, and one 
piece of late barley that won’t be harvested for another 
week or so.” 

“ There’s always something doing on a farm, I 
suppose. It’s a healthy life. No time to be idle or 
discontented.” 

“ You can’t satisfy yourself with the work only,” 
said Lillias, unconscious that she voiced a great truth. 
“ I think John was wanting something to look to when 
it was done.” 

" He ought to marry,” said Colonel Thorne with an 
effort. Then he glanced sharply at the face on the 
other side of the round table, and caught his breath. 
He thought he had every line of her beauty by heart, 
and yet at times she flashed upon him afresh, as if he 
had never seen her before. Perhaps she had bound 
the great plaits of hair a trifle more tastefully round 
her head, so that little folds of the looser hair shadowed 
her forehead and made her more womanly and less 
classical. Perhaps some warmth from her repressed 
heart had crept unawares into her blue eyes and made 
them deeper and tenderer to-day. He was quick to 
attribute it to the reference to John Daish, of course, 
for like most keenly observant people he was not 
intuitive and he rarely waited to think. 

“ We are in no hurry to marry in our family,” said 
Lillias with sudden reserve. The softer expression 
seemed to withdraw itself and leave her face nothing 
but a serene loveliness of line and colour. “ My 
uncle did not marry until middle life, and my own 
paretns kept company for ten years, waiting till they 
had money enough. John is fond of children ,and 


i5& 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


he has taken a great interest in a little waif he took in 
and is training as a farm boy. I think the boy will 
be a boon to him, though he is a terribly naughty one ! " 
A sense of shocked disapproval was obvious even 
through her gentle sympathy for her cousin. 

“ That won't take the place of children of his own,” 
said Thorne impatiently. 

“ I think it may. He seems fair bound up in 
Charley.'' 

“ Who is the boy ? " 

" We do not know. He is a little waif from London 
who hid himself in one of the vans and came down to 
the farm without the men knowing he was there. John 
thinks he is gipsy born. He looks like it, he is so dark, 
and such black eyes." 

“ Daish will never keep him to regular work if he 
belongs to the gipsies. What age is he ? I have never 
seen him about the farm." 

“ He says he is fourteen and over, but he looks 
barely twelve, he is so thin and slight. He had been 
very ill, and in a workhouse infirmary before he came 
here, and John will not have him do any heavy work. 
It is spoiling the boy, if he is to be really trained for 
the farm. As like as not Charley was off playing truant 
when you were over at Leith. He has run aw r ay once 
or twice, but John brought him back." 

“ What a curious fancy for a man like Daish ! I 
should like to see the boy." 

“ Tell him so. It will please him." Lillias stretched 
out her warm, sunburnt hand across the table towards 
her guest’s empty cup. “ May I give you some more 
tea ? " 


TELLING THE BEES 


157 


But the innocent offer was the spark to kindle a 
fire they had both discreetly shielded for a whole 
week of summer weather and propinquity. Teddy 
Thorne had not the least intention of offering any 
familiarity to his hostess when he entered the pretty, 
sweet-smelling parlour. Beyond giving him tea tete- 
a-tete he had never received the least encouragement 
from Lillias Daish, and he would have said that he 
respected her far too much to attempt a flirtation 
beyond the careless flow of debonair gallantry that 
he affected with all women. He thought that she 
kept him at a distance and frightened him a little. 
And yet, seeing the open hand stretched out to him, 
helpless, as if asking for something, the blood suddenly 
flew to his good-looking face, and bending his head 
he had kissed the smooth palm before either of them 
could recover themselves. 

His hands closed on the girl's arm before she could 
draw it away, and he held her so, looking deep 
into her eyes with his own dark with passion. 

“ Lillias—I ought not to come here—I ought to 
have gone away days ago ! " he said. 

“ I thought—you were here for the shooting," said 
Lillias blankly. In moments of the strongest emotion 
the slow, Daish brain was apt to take refuge in 
obvious statements. They might suffer like the brute 
creation ; they were nearly as inarticulate. 

“ I should have left last week when I found how ill 
Leith was," said Colonel Thorne recklessly. “ I 
have made excuses to stop on, until I wonder if he 
suspects me. You know why I have stayed, my dear !" 

The blood rose slowly over Lillias’ wonderful face. 


158 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


until it seemed to draw tears to her eyes like the dew 
on the lavender. The man and woman looked at 
each other as if they knew how hopeless it was. She 
never protested that she had offered him no least 
inducement to stay, because she knew that in her heart 
she had most ardently desired it, and that seemed to 
her culpable enough. Fate had very cruelly left her 
serenity undisturbed by a host of suitable lovers, to 
waken her heart at last for this smart, clean man of 
the world, many years her senior, Sir Henry's friend 
and equal, out of her sphere and her life together. 
It was an incongruous tragedy. 

Very slowly she tried to draw her hand away, and 
when his grip prevented her she waited patiently 
until he should release her, but there was no yielding 
in her patience. It never occurred to her to take 
refuge in subterfuge, to say she did not understand 
him or to pretend resentment. She accepted the two 
bare facts as she saw them—that he was offering her 
love of some sort, even if undeclared, and that their 
positions made anything further impossible. 

“ I think—you had better leave me/' she said with 
difficulty. 

“ I will if you send me away. You don't care a 
little bit for me then ? " 

“ I think—you had better go." 

He knew he ought not to press her further ; he had 
no right to speak of such a serious thing as love, and 
yet it was of too real moment to him to laugh it off 
as he would have done with another woman, and to 
treat it as a passing flirtation. Hurt vanity betrayed 
him into inflicting a wound that he did not know he 


TELLING THE BEES 


159 

gave, as he pushed back his chair roughly and 
rose. 

“ I see it is nothing to you if I go or stay. Forgive 
me for kissing your hand. You need not grudge me 
that—it hasn’t hurt you.” 

Perhaps the light was getting low in the shady par¬ 
lour, or perhaps his own eyes were a little dim with 
self-pity—the most usual reason for tears ; but if 
he had seen her face clearly he would have recognised a 
pain much deeper and slower than his own easily 
roused emotions. To Colonel Thorne the past week 
had been amazingly short, gauged by the growth of 
his own feeling for the still, beautiful woman who 
seemed to him unmoved. To Lilli as it had been 
amazingly long, because it contained the whole of her 
first experience of love. 

He held out his hand to her in silence, but as she 
put her own into it he looked what he meant to be his 
last at the beauty that had rendered him helpless despite 
all his experience of life and the selfishness of his self- 
control. 

“ Good-bye, my dear,” he said huskily. She had 
always been attracted by his voice, with its clear 
utterance and the cultivation that no modern habit 
of slang could alter; but it had never set her 
pulses throbbing as it did now. “ Forgive me if 
I have troubled you. You are quite right—I had 
better go. Don’t look at me—don’t come with 
me.” 

She had made a movement as if to accompany him 
to the cottage door as she always did ; but she drew 
back, still silent, as he spoke, and stood by the useless 


i6o THE LAVENDER LAD 

tea-table with its pretty china and home-made dainties, 
until he had passed out of the room. It was only a 
few steps to the cottage door—a short walk down the 
mossy garden path between the gay flowers—then 
the gate clicked as it had clicked at his coming, and 
he was gone. 

It was the sound of the gate that made Lillias realise 
what had happened in the last quick five minutes. 
Her thoughts were slow to arrange themselves, and 
she was unused to intense feeling of any kind. But 
the finality of it smote her all at once into ugly pain. 
He had come and gone in her life—a stranger, asking 
the way over the garden gate ; a lover unavowed, 
stealing the content from her days and the placidity of 
ignorance. She looked round the little room, which 
had suddenly become too narrow for the painful 
experience she had known, and wondered if her life 
would ever fit into the old groove again, whether the 
pleasure of her youth and health and the duties of 
every day would ever satisfy her now. . . . Then, 
with slow care, she began mechanically placing the 
tea-things together and folding up the embroidered 
cloth that had been so carefully chosen—for this. 

“ We neither of us ate a good tea,” said Lillias 
slowly to herself. “ I had better ask Mrs. Smith and 
Alice to finish the cake.” . . . Outside in the garden 
she could hear the low drone of the happy bees still 
busy amongst her flowers, and she remembered how 
she had gone to the hives and told them of her secret 
love, for the first time in her life. She had been half 
ashamed of the old custom even then, but her fear of 
endangering the elusive thing had made her super- 


TELLING THE BEES 


161 


stitious. If one did not tell the bees the great events 
of one’s life they might be angry, and ill-luck would 
follow, while they themselves deserted the hives. 
Now it all seemed too childish even for shame. He had 
come and gone, and there was nothing more to tell. 

Colonel Thorne walked out of the sunny garden 
without in the least knowing where he was going. 
He turned to the right mechanically, and followed 
the road to the little bridge because he had gone that 
way before. The lines between his eyes seemed to 
have deepened, and they were puckered at the corners. 
He was an elderly man, and he realised it as he seldom 
had to do, because he w r as vigorous and full of the joy 
of life, and his charm for men and women had not 
failed him. But he felt suddenly dissatisfied with 
himself, and aware that he had undergone mental pain 
for no corresponding satisfaction. A woman of Lillias’ 
age was out of his reach, without counting her unusual 
beauty. He had been a fool to become infatuated, 
and could expect no return, even if he had been in a 
position to take her heart by storm and marry her. 
He did not want to marry a girl in that position, even 
though John Daish was sufficiently unique to pass 
muster anywhere, and she seemed to have no nearer 
relations. (This was true, but he had never seen Mrs. 
Annie Jennings, who, though a still more distant 
cousin than John, was enough of kin to be a very grave 
drawback to a man of Thorne’s type—the “ bad 
smell ” of evil indeed !) But, anyhow, he did not want 
to marry at all, and had no intention of doing so. 
The moment’s rash impulse had ended satisfactorily, 

as his reason told him, and the sooner he left the 

L 



162 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Place and got himself out of danger the better. It 
was all for the best, after all, and the girl had cared 
nothing for him beyond a passing kindness that he 
was almost mistaken into thinking was tenderness. 
Reason, caution, common sense echoed: “It is all 
for the best ! ” 

Only, unfortunately, the heart in his broad breast 
was neither reasonable, cautious, nor filled with 
common sense. It cried out that he had missed his 
mate, and that material considerations mattered very 
little to the discomfort of a yearning that would not 
be appeased. 

He walked along the empty fields where the men 
were cleaning up the rakings, and without noticing 
the direction he was taking found himself at the gate 
of Leith farm. Here he turned aside abruptly, directly 
he recognised where he was, being in no mood for more 
of the Daish family at present. There was a gate 
into some of the Leith pastures, however, a little 
farther up the road—the same in which John Daish 
had found the boy Charley when he was running away, 
and brought him back—and Colonel Thorne 
turned in here and walked along under the high hedges, 
absorbed in his own thoughts to the exclusion of his 
direction, save that instinct told him he was going on 
the homeward way to Leith Place. Those wise 
counsellors, Caution, Reason, and Common Sense, were 
very busy refuting the rebel voice of his heart that 
dared to speak of Love. 

Caution said: “ You do not know what lovers the 
girl may have ; there must be some favoured swain— 
and you are a jealous man. It would be intolerable 


TELLING THE BEES 


163 


to you if she smiled on a younger admirer, or had had 
affairs in the past. And what can you expect with 
that face ? ” 

But Love said : “You have only to look at her clean, 
frank beauty to know that she is as true as steel. If 
there were another man she would tell you. But if 
it were you , you would rest content to the end of your 
life.” 

Common Sense said : “ The marriage is impossible. 
You belong to different classes, and she would jar on 
all your habits and instincts.” 

But Love said: “ She is quick to learn. And are 
you so refined yourself, so intellectual or well-educated 
that you want a brilliant woman for your wife rather 
than a helpmate ? You are nothing but the racing, 
slack-moraled, free-tongued type of man whose 
knowledge of everything but the world is slipshod. 
Why, you are hardly fit for her , even from a social 
standpoint.” 

Reason said : “ Pack up your things to-night and 
tell Harry Leith you are bound to get on to Scotland 
to-morrow. Have done with this folly; the grouse are 
really more worth having to a man of your stamp than 
Lilli as Daish.” 

But Love said : ” Her eyes are the colour of the 
lavender ! . . . .” 

Colonel Thorne sighed impatiently, turning his 
handsome head restlessly as if in pain. And as he 
made the pettish movement he became aware of a figure 
sauntering towards him, as absorbed in something in 
the hedge as he had been in his own thoughts, so that 
they were within a few yards of each other before he 


164 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


or the person approaching him recognised the other's 
presence. The boy—for he instantly concluded that 
this was Daish’s protege—was neatly if somewhat 
shabbily dressed in short knickerbockers and a dark 
blue jersey that showed his tanned neck. He wore 
square-toed boots and stout gaiters like any other 
farm boy, but his round black head had no covering 
save its thick hair. His face was as tanned as his 
neck, but as he came closer to Colonel Thorne it turned 
almost livid, and the great black eyes narrowed with 
the desperate fear of some animal about to fight to 
the death. For the minute the man and the boy stood 
still within a yard of each other, staring with a tragic 
recognition, and the peace of the August evening had 
suddenly become the hush before a storm. Then 
Thcrne came a stride nearer, stretched out his arm 
and caught the boy’s shoulder in a grip that there was 
no escaping. 

“ Charley I ” he said, lowering his voice instinctively, 
“ What are you doing here ? ” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE BOY AT BAY 

“ What is that to you ? ” 

The boy and the man stood staring hard into each 
other’s faces as if their recognition were still an incred¬ 
ible thing to both of them Thorne’s keen, observant 
eyes were searching his prisoner from head to foot, 
as if something in Charley’s appearance puzzled him 
for all his certainty of itsidentity. The slight figure 
upon which he retained his hold had grown rigid, and 
in the great black eyes that never fell before his own 
was a savage desperation that seemed to voice itself 
in his repeated challenge : 

“ What the hell is that to do with you ? ” 

Colonel Thorne’s face suddenly relaxed from its 
first sternness, and something like pity came into it 
instead. His grasp upon the thin shoulder slackened, 
though his hand rested there still. 

“ Come, that’s not the way to speak to an old 
friend,” he said more gently. “ We don’t need to 
rag each other, do we ? I am not interfering with you, 
but I want to know how it is you are here, and what 
you are doing. For the sake of old times you might 
tell me.” 

The boy could perfectly well have twisted himself 

16* 


i66 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


out of the man's grasp now, and got away; but he 
did not doit. He stood there instead, as if half petrified, 
and his eyes still met Thorne's with that miserable 
defiance. 

“ I’m on a farm here," he said, half furtively and 
below his breath. 

“ Daish’s ? " 

“ Yes-" 

“ You are the boy in whom Daish is so interested ? " 

“ Yes-" 

“ I was afraid so." 

“ For the matter of that, what are you doing here ? " 
retorted the boy sharply, his brows contracting in an 
ugly fashion above the distended eyes. 

“ I am staying with Harry Leith." 

“ Game-leg Harry !—I feared something of this 
sort when I heard he owned property about here. 
Thought some of the old crowd might be coming down— 
but I never thought of you, till lately." 

" Didn’t you know we were friends ? You must 
have known." 

“ No, I never saw you together. He came with the 
Lexiters and Lady Harbinger and that little lot." 
There was no Cockney accent in Charley’s speech now, 
and yet he seemed slipping into an equally familiar 
slang—familiar to Colonel Thorne as well as him¬ 
self. 

“ How long have you been here ? " asked Thorne 
abruptly. “ Can’t you take me somewhere where we 
can talk ? " 

"About a month, or six weeks. No, we must talk 
here if you will talk. But you’d better let it alone, I 




THE BOY AT BAY 167 

warn you ! ” There was menace in the lowering brows 
now. 

" Nonsense. Of course we must talk. I can’t 
leave it like this—it’s monstrous ! How do you 
manage on the farm ? You can’t live amongst the 
men.” 

“ No, I sleep over the stables, in a loft.” A flicker 
of wicked amusement lifted the gloom of Charleys 
face for a moment. He looked at Thorne with a flash 
of white teeth, to meet the incredulity in his face. 
“I’ve got the hay for a bed and an old blanket. If 
it’s cold I pull the hay over too. You just try it ! 
It’s better than a bedroom at the Ritz. Ah ! I sleep 
sounder there than I have for many a long day! ” 
Then for the first time his wild eyes left Thorne’s face 
and sought the evening sky, growing splendid with 

sunset behind the belt of trees that hid the farm from 

* 

the meadow where they stood. Rose and purple and 
pure gold, the gorgeous colours ripped up the seraphic 
blue of the August evening, and into Charley’s face 
came an infinite regret. 

“ Was that why you left London, Charley ? I heard 
you were ill, and having a rest.” 

The boyish figure shivered slightly as if with cold. 

“ Sort of breakdown,” he said. “ And then ’flu. 
They kept me quiet—too quiet. It began to drive 
me mad. Then one night I went out on the old lay— 
you know. But I felt all tottery, as one does after 
’flu, and I saw one of the lavender vans from the farm 
here and got into it, because I had to lie still or I should 
have dropped. I think I was a bit light in the head 
still but I fell asleep under some mats—they call them 


i68 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


archangels down here—and when I woke we were 
jolting out of Covent Garden. So I stayed where I 
was, just to see the thing out/’ 

Thorne nodded. “ Yes, the escapade is just like 
you, so far. Go on.” 

“ I didn’t mean to stay, of course. I meant to get 
out of it when I’d had my fun. But I was dead beat, 
and I found some fodder in the distillery over there 
and slipped in and meant to have my sleep out. And 
then—then ” 

Thorne’s intent eyes read the changing face before 
the unready words could come. Something seemed 
to alter in the boy. He turned white under the tan 
of his gipsy skin, and two great tears welled up and 
hung on his thick lashes with unconscious effect. 

“ And then you saw John Daish,” said Thorne 
deliberately. 

“ He came and found me, to save my being mauled 
by their guard-dog. Hector hated me for a while, 
because he was jealous. But I saved his life one night 
in the distillery, and he never forgets. I wish he were 
here now ! ” 

In a flash the fierceness had come back, the black 
eyes burned like coals, and the little white teeth were 
bared like a wolf’s. 

“ Why ? Do you want to set him on me ? ” 

“ He’d kill you if I told him to ! ” 

“ But I think you wouldn’t tell him to, Charley,” 
said Thorne gently, and the anger died out of the boy’s 
face, leaving a sullen shame. 

“ You want to drive me away,” he said resentfully. 
“ I know you do, though you haven’t said it. Why ? 



THE BOY AT BAY 169 

You don't care what I do. That's all done with—why 
shouldn’t I stay ? " 

“ I like John Daish, Charley. He’s a good sort of 
man, but he won’t understand—you. Or forgive you 
either. When are you going to own up ? ” 

" That’s my business.” 

“ No, mine.” 

“ You’d best not interfere. You’re not here for 
the shooting, yourself. I’ve seen you hanging round 
the cottage where a certain young woman lives, day 
after day. Are you any better than I am, if it comes 
to that ? ” 

The short sharp sentences pelted Colonel Thorne 
like blows, and for the minute he had to draw breath, 
quick though he was in self-defence and excuse. 

“ That’s rather a different thing,” he said, and his 
voice was a little slower with the drawl that always 
came into it to resent an impertinence. “ I am not 
sailing under false colours. My visits to the cottage, 
or anywhere else, are perfectly aboveboard.” 

” You wouldn't altogether want them known in 
the neighbourhood, though ! ” said Charley with reck¬ 
less shrewdness. “ You let me alone, and I’ll let 
you alone.” 

“ You’ve overreached the mark this time. I'm 
going away-” 

“ Rather late for a fit of conscience from Teddy 
Thorne ! ” 

“ But before I go either you or I will tell John Daish,” 
said Thorne firmly. The colour had come up into 
his handsome face for a minute, but that was all there 
was to tell that Charley’s gibe had gone home. “ I 



170 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


wonder that he has not suspected. Has he never 
heard of a certain Carlotta Edison of the Variety stage 
•—the most wonderful impersonator of the London arab 
that ever took the public by storm ? He must see 
the papers sometimes, even if he has never been to 
the Palace/ 1 

“ He didn’t recognise me,” panted Charley, and the 
dark eyes were piteous with pleading. “ I tried it on 
him to see. There was a picture in the Graphic — 
I pointed it out to him, and told him that girl imitated 
boys like me ! ” 

" The deuce you did ! You have a nerve, Charley.” 

“ It meant nothing to him—he’d never seen me. 
Even if he had I could have bluffed it. I’ve played 
the part as I never played on the stage—played it for 
six weeks—because-—because of John Daish. Oh, 
don’t drive me away—don’t ! don’t! Teddy—for 
the sake of old times—let me stay a little longer ! ” 

The boy was all gone in a moment. There was 
nothing but a woman in the little hot hands grasping 
Colonel’ Thorne’s and the great eyes full of the hunger 
of a lawless love. It shook him, man of the world though 
he was, perhaps the more for coming so soon after his 
own emotion and the bitterness of renouncement. 
His eyes were very kind as they looked down at the 
round black head and the expressive face that were, 
alas ! so familiar to him and to other men. 

“ What’s the good, Charley dear ? He must know 
some time. And I warn you that the longer you keep 
it up the more angry he will be. He is growing to 
care for you—he doesn’t know why, but when you 
tell him who and what you are he will feel himself 


THE BOY AT BAY 


171 

tricked. Those slow, quiet men can be very angry. 
Take my advice—don't let him know at all, if you have 
any feeling for him yourself, but run away again and 
let him think you've gone back to your tramping 
life." 

“ I can't, Teddy. I love him too much." She pressed 
her sunburnt hands to the woman’s breast under her 
boyish jersey, and rocked her body to and fro with a 
little moaning sound. Thorne had known her in 
many moods, undisciplined and passionate and full 
of the temperament of the artist ; but he had never 
seen her like this before. He laid his hand on the 
black head tenderly, and his voice was a little husky 
again from sympathy. 

“ Then you must tell him, Charley." 

“ If I do he will send me away ! " 

“ I am afraid so." 

“ Oh, give me time," she moaned. “ Time to make 
him care for me so that he can’t. That’s all I want— 
a few weeks longer." 

But she saw no final yielding in his face, only pity, 
and with a quick change of manner she flung his hand 
off, bursting into a wild hysterical laugh that had 
something ominous in it. 

“ Very well, do your worst, Teddy—and I’ll do 
mine ! " she cried. “ You are not the one to judge me, 
or to tell me what I ought to do—you, who ... I’ll 
beat you on the post yet, old sport ! " 

She sprang past him, as quick as the boy she per¬ 
sonated, and was gone in a flash, through a gap in the 
hedge and up and over the next field. Colonel Thorne 
did not attempt to follow her, and after a few minutes 


172 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


she doubled, and creeping back through a dry ditch 
kept him in sight, though he did not know it. If he 
took the way to the farm now she must devise some 
desperate scheme to stop him—but fortunately for 
himself his own thoughts were too much in a turmoil 
to make it advisable to go and see John Daish on the 
instant, and the girl watched him pause to light a cigar 
and then return to the road, smoking it. 

Hiding behind hedges, and creeping through the 
rich undergrowth of the summer, “ Charley ” (she 
had always been Charley to the public rather than 
Carlotta) stalked her prey until she saw him enter the 
gates of the Place, and then with momentary relief 
she knew she was safe for this night at least. There 
was no saying what he might do on the morrow, and 
her burning brain began devising the means to frustrate 
him, hardly stopping short of wickedness in her 
extremity. At all costs he must be stopped from 
seeing John Daish before he left the neighbourhood, 
if indeed he were going. She did not much believe 
in his resolution, having known Teddy Thorne at 
his worst and most self-indulgent, and not recognising 
that a nobler influence might bring better results. 
If we look for garbage in men or women we usually 
find it, and it seems a miracle that others should dis¬ 
cover jewels in the ash-heap we have been raking. 

Charley’s feverish mind seized on and dealt with the 
most probable dangers that threatened her in Thorne’s 
arrival at the farm, until her mentality became almost 
unbalanced and she was in the mood that Daish had 
seen when Mrs. Skelton had struck her. Little short 
of murderous he had thought her then ; little short 


THE BOY AT BAY 


173 


of murderous she was now. Suppose Thorne walked 
over to the farm as he had done to-day : she would 
loose Hector and set the dog on him. Hector would 
do anything now for her urging. But if he rode, as 
he usually did, it was more difficult. She put her 
hands to her hot head and thought. . . . What was 
that that had happened to Lady Harbinger in the Park 
last year, when she had an accident ? . . . Some Boy 
Scout with a pole—was that it ? ... Yes, a Boy 
Scout, flourishing one of their long poles-—and the 
horse had taken fright and bolted amongst the plane 
trees running down the Mile. That had been an acci¬ 
dent, but. ... A wicked trick if done on purpose— 
it might mean a bad fall. Lady Harbinger had had 
her leg fractured in two places . . . and Ted Thorne 
was by no means a young man. . . . The blood beat 
in Charley’s temples and she caught her breath with a 
fierce sob. 

“ Well, don’t let him drive me to it !—it’s on his 
own head,” she said, and made a gesture such as 
Pilate may have done when he washed his hands before 
the multitude, saying : “ I am clear of this blood ! ” 


CHAPTER X 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 

It was not in Colonel Thorne’s nature to be intentionally 
unkind. He had no doubt caused as much secret 
unhappiness as other men of his type who never turn 
aside from the gay adventure, and make love with as 
neat an instinct as they knot their ties. But at least 
he had never done a woman deliberate harm beyond 
that prompted by male instincts-—which cannot be 
called deliberate-—and as he walked steadily home¬ 
wards to the Place he decided that it was not his busi¬ 
ness to unmask Miss Carlotta Edison if she chose to 
play the farm-boy, much as he deprecated the escapade. 
In his heart he had never meant to betray her identity 
to Daish ; but he wanted to frighten her into a con¬ 
fession, herself, or to induce her to run off again 
without enlightening the lavender farmer, and to 
vanish out of his life as mysteriously as she had come 
into it. 

This was, to Colonel Teddy’s mind, the better 
plan and much the more pleasant. He judged rightly 
of John Daish's temper if he found that he had been 
tricked; and if his heart were set on the supposed boy 
it seemed kinder to let him think that Charley’s roving 
instinct had proved too strong for any home ties, and 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


175 


that he had gone back to his vagrancy. Why should 
Daish ever know ? He did not care for London or its 
amusements, as Thorne had discovered in their desul¬ 
tory intercourse while rabbit-shooting. If he went to 
see anything it was a good play, and Carlotta’s vogue 
was strictly confined to variety shows which would 
never attract him. Her very notoriety and much- 
advertised name were her best disguise, for John Daish 
would not dream of connecting Carlotta Edison the 
mimic of the Halls with his lost street arab, though 
the London boy was her best-known reproduction. Yes, 
it was certainly best that she should quietly disappear 
from Leith farm and return to the life which she had 
suddenly dropped ; and Colonel Teddy, from the depths 
of his kindly, selfish heart, devoutly hoped that she 
would take his advice. Carlotta Edison—little Charley 
Edison !—could there be anything more incongruous 
than the association of such a girl with John Daish 
. . . unless perhaps it was his own with Lillias ? . . . 

Colonel Thorne was in an unusually sober mood that 
night at dinner. Sir Henry was still upstairs, but his 
agent had been called in to keep his guest company, 
and being a pleasant young fellow and a good sports¬ 
man, had proved adequate to keep the table lively and 
the butler in suppressed but appreciative mirth 
between his tales and the colonel’s. Few men had 
so large a collection of stories as Teddy Thorne, or 
as unmentionable in general society. But on this, 
his last night at the Place, his wit almost dragged, and 
even the rusty-coloured port did not mellow his 
tongue. Mr. Simons, the agent, wondered what was 
the matter with him, and thought the heat of the 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


176 

day must have tried him, wiry though he was, for 
he was an elderly man when one came to think of 
it. 

“ I think you walk rather far, sir,” he said, when 
Thorne excused himself by reference to a long tramp 
through Daish’s fields. “ It’s a bit too much in this 
heat. Why don’t you use the horses ? Tliey are 
doing nothing most days, and Sir Henry would be 
delighted. He always keeps two or three in the 
stables instead of sending them all to grass, and I 
can’t give them all work.” 

“ Thanks—but I'm leaving to-morrow,” said Colonel 
Thorne, and he thought of a face that he did not mean 
to see again, with braids of corn-coloured hair and 
lavender eyes. . . . “ There’s no fool like an old fool! ” 
he added in his heart, while the agent expressed honest 
regret. 

Nevertheless he did not leave in the morning as he 
had intended, on account of the heat. Breakfast was 
always late at the Place, and by the time that he could 
get off it would be the hottest period of the August day. 
Better take an afternoon train, said Mr. Simons, and 
Colonel Thorne acquiesced, rather annoyed with him¬ 
self for having missed the quicker express that took 
business men to London in the early hours. Here he 
was held up for a whole morning, after all, with that 
damnable memory of a sunny garden full of light and 
flowers only a mile or so away ; of the cool shady 
parlour, and the face he must not see. . . . But why 
not, so long as she did not see him ? What was to 
prevent his taking Simons’ advice and riding about 
the country a little to fill in the time ? Not nearly 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


177 

so hot as walking—and if he passed by the cottage once 
more it could not harm her. . . . 

A man of Colonel Thorne’s age who is even passingly 
in love is far more sentimental than most younger 
men. He really had no intention of speaking to Lilli as, 
hardly any desire to do so—but a foolish impulse 
drove him to ride past the cottage once more, and if 
fate willed it to catch sight of her amongst her flowers. 
He was just as likely to see her cutting the vegetables 
for dinner, or attending to her bees, in her practical 
round of commonplace duties, had he realised it; but 
he had a fancy that his first picture of her in the garden 
should be repeated at the last, and not that distracting 
memory of something bordering on a tragedy which 
belonged to the moment of parting in the sitting-room. 
Whenever he thought of it he almost wondered if she 
had cared for him—but the thought was ridiculous, 
considering her calm demeanour and the short space 
they had known each other. 

He had always made himself popular in the stables, 
with a horseman’s real knowledge of his subject. The 
grooms were keen to show him that the Place could 
mount him well, and urged him to take the cob for 
an hour—a mouth like velvet, and a nice ride. The 
animal was very fit, in spite of the heat and the time 
of year, and in hard condition. Colonel Thorne, 
cantering easily down the park, found that he pulled 
a bit, and wished that he had chosen the lazy mare that 
the groom contemptuously compared to a funeral. 
“ Mr. .Simons he likes to take his time, sir—he lets her 
go her own pace. You’d better have the cob.” 
Thorne would have preferred to go a slower pace also. 


178 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


for it was hot even in the saddle, and he had his own 
thoughts for company. 

He made his way out of the park and through a gate 
into the rough land where he and John Daish had gone 
rabbit-shooting. Here he had to hold his mount for 
fear of the warren, and he turned aside into the small 
spinney that bounded the familiar shady road, rather 
thankful for the shelter from the sun and the necessity 
of going at a foot's pace. He could push his way out 
of the spinney a little further down the road, and ride 
back past the cottage, and so home by Daish’s pastures. 
He was within a yard of the road, but still in the shadow 
of the plantation, when something rushed out of the 
undergrowth, flourishing what looked like a long pole 
right under the cob’s nose. It was in vain for the 
rider to shout “ Look out! ” or to catch up his rein. 
The cob swerved as quickly as any polo pony, turning 
as if on his own axis, crashed past a tree and, finding 
himself free of his rider a second later, took the low 
hedge in perfect style and galloped back to his stable. 

Colonel Thorne had fallen because his leg was 
broken. The cob had allowed for his own body to 
pass the tree, as horses always do even when maddened 
by fear, but had caught the man’s knee against the 
trunk and snapped it as neatly as any ju jitsu wrestler. 
For a few minutes there was nothing to be heard in 
the hot morning except the sound of galloping hoofs 
dying away into distance. Then the undergrowth 
rustled again and that “ something ” crept inch by 
inch to the fallen figure, the pole that had wrought the 
mischief in its guilty hand. With eyes still reckless 
and desperate, Charley looked down on the disaster 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


179 


she had caused, not yet repentant, not even alarmed— 
only aware that she had stopped Thorne riding out to 
Leith as she supposed he intended, and betraying her 
to Daish. He would not be likely to interfere in other 
people’s lives for the present, having something of 
his own to think about ! 

Then her heart smote her. He lay so very still! 
Some memory of remote kindness for the handsome face 
lying at her feet rose in her mind, though it was so 
remote as to be nothing but a memory. She stooped 
lower over him, and his dazed eyes opened and looked 
at her, dark with pain. 

“ Charley—you little devil! ” he said faintly. And 
then : “ Don’t tell anyone what you did, or you’ll 
get into trouble. Go and get help—my leg’s 
gone.” 

Charley had sprung to her feet at his recognition of 
her, but instead of answering she stood listening, her 
body braced as if with fear. “ There’s someone coming 
now! ” she said, and made off into the undergrowth 
with the quickness of a wild cat. 

The sound of the cob’s uneven gallop had told its 
own tale of a riderless horse, even before it passed 
the nearest dwelling-place. Lilli as Daish was in her 
bedroom upstairs, superintending a thorough “ turn¬ 
out ” by her little housemaid, when the pace of those 
hoofs struck on her ear and sent her to the window 
with some presentiment of disaster. She recognised 
the animal, as people who live in one neighbourhood 
do recognise every beast upon the roads, and saw that 
it was heading back towards the Place. But who— 
who had been in that empty saddle ? 


i8o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ Quick, Alice—there’s a runaway horse,” she said. 
“ One of Sir Henry’s—the cob the agent sometimes 
rides.” She did not know why she said that, unless it 
were to still her own fears. 

The girl ran after her out of the room and down the 
stairs, gasping out questions: “ Did you see it, 

miss ? Who’s hurt ? Is it Mr. Simons ? ” 

" I don’t know—the horse was riderless,” said 
Lillias as she ran through the garden without waiting 
to put on a hat. She knew only that the cob had come 
galloping down the by-road, and the rider might be 
anywhere—in the rabbit warren, or the spinney, or 
miles up the road. She dared not hurry, though her 
heart was racing with an unspoken fear, and she 
walked steadily along the road, looking on either side 
of her carefully, Alice following behind panting out 
exclamations and questions. Once something rustled 
and Lillias stood still, listening; but she did not see 
that small wicked figure steal into the undergrowth 
again and vanish. All that guided her was some instinct 
that made her push through the low hedge whence the 
rustling had come, and there, almost at her feet, was 
a man’s helpless body and Colonel Thorne’s unconscious 
face, for he had tried to move into a sitting posture to 
attract attention, and the pain in his leg had made him 
faint again. 

“ Go back to the cottage, Alice, and get help,” said 
Lillias in a level voice and with a perfectly composed 
manner. “ Tell your mother that Colonel Thorne has 
been thrown, and that I want some brandy—the 
brandy in the old case bottle in the chiffonier.” Even 
in her extremity Lillias could not help being methodical 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


181 


and careful in her instructions. “ We shall have to 
get a man to move him.” 

“ Oh, lor, miss, is he killed ? ” asked Alice hysteri¬ 
cally, peering over her mistress’s shoulder with an 
excitement that was almost enjoyment. “ He do look 
bad! ” 

Lilli as turned with a sudden roughness and almost 
thrust her away. “ Go and do as I bid you ! ” she 
said harshly, and her face squared itself into a more 
marked likeness of her cousin John. She looked 
extremely like John when things had gone very wrong 
through somebody’s carelessness, and his men were 
feeling the weight of his displeasure. But all that Alice 
noticed was her authority and the fact that she did 
not lose her head. 

“ Miss Lillias was not near so upset as me,” she told 
her mother breathlessly as she related the accident in 
gasps. “ It made me feel all queer like to see him lying 
there as good as dead, but she just thought about the 
brandy and getting him home—and it’s in the case 
bottle, she says, in the chiffonier—and a man too, and 
who are we to get ? ” 

“ You run round to the lodge, and see if Mr. Dymock’s 
in, Alice, while I get the brandy; you’d be the better 
for a drop yourself—you look that done ! And they’ll 
want to know at the Place even if Dymock's out, and 
tell Mrs. Dymock to go up as fast as she can and say 
the colonel’s run away and killed ! ” 

“ And ’im so ’andsome ! ” said Alice admiringly, 
with her hand on her heart. “ Poor gentleman ! I 
fancied ’im looking jest so in his coffin the instant I 
set eyes on 'im lying there ! I couldn’t ’ave stayed 


l8 2 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


with 'im alone as Miss Lillias is, not for all the world ! 
I should jest 'ave screamed. And she so cool and not 
a tear in her eyes ! " 

Lillias was indeed dry-eyed as she knelt down beside 
the helpless figure and put her hand half timidly on 
his heart; but her lips were almost colourless with an 
agony that made her far more sick and faint than her 
hysterical maid. It seemed almost like a liberty to 
touch him when he was unconscious, and though she 
had passed her First Aid exams, during the war, like 
so many cottage girls, she felt singularly helpless—as 
helpless as that curiously inert figure that seemed no 
longer Colonel Thorne, since it was stripped of his 
vitality and dash. And yet his very helplessness made 
a stronger appeal to Lillias than all the veiled love- 
making by which he had stolen her heart, and swept 
away all the barriers of resignation and humility with 
which she had been entrenching herself in the last 
twenty-four hours. For the moment at least he was 
hers, her own, to succour and to save, and her heart's 
strong yearning might have its way with her, since he 
was as dependent as a child might be. She belonged 
to the type of woman who would fain keep its men folk 
in short clothes for ever. 

How handsome he was ! even though the ardour 
was gone from his face and the restless fire from his 
eyes. “ I never thought to like grey hair," thought 
poor Lillias. “ I always said it was a sign of an old 
man—but he isn't old, somehow ! " 

She flung up her head suddenly, as her quick ears 
caught the sound of a motor horn—a “ Gabriel " 
horn that rang rather sweetly round a distant curve in 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


183 

the road. Very few cars came over this little by-way 
to the more important road, and nobody would use it 
who did not know it for a short cut. 

“ It’s Dr. Matthews ! ” said Lillias half aloud in 
her relief. “ Nobody else has a Gabriel horn hereabouts. 
Oh, thank God ! thank God ! ” 

The prayer was as genuine in gratitude as any prayer 
in church, and she sprang out into the road, waving 
impetuously to the driver to stop. Dr. Matthews was 
alone, as he often was, and he drew up sharply on 
seeing Lillias, bareheaded and gesticulating. 

“ Oh, doctor, there has been an accident. Sir 
Henry’s friend from the Place has been throvn,” she 
said simply. Lillias was always direct. “I saw the 
horse galloping home, and came and found Colonel 
Thorne.” 

“Is he badly hurt ? What’s the matter ? ” asked 
the doctor as he stopped his engine and tumbled out 
of the driver’s seat. “ H’m—very fortunate he’s so 
near the road. Was he conscious when you found him ? ” 
He was down on his knees in the fern, making a rapid 
examination of the inert body as far as he could, even 
while he spoke. 

“ No, he has never been conscious,” said Lillias. She 
shivered a little as Dr. Matthews handled the loose 
limbs, and her breath was rather laboured ; but she 
stood by quietly, ready to serve at whatever task should 
be set her. 

As if to disprove her assertion Ted Thorne at that 
moment opened his dazed dark eyes and looked up into 
the doctor’s face with his own contracting with pain. 

“ Don’t touch my leg—it’s broken,” he said huskily. 


184 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“ I don’t think there’s any more harm done. Can 
you get me home ? ” 

“ Humph ! ” grunted the doctor, as much to himself 
as his patient. “ I prefer to be sure of the damage 
before I jolt you very far over these roads. They’re a 
disgrace to the county! I’m going to trespass on 
Miss Daish’s hospitality to take you to her cottage 
until I see that you are fit to be moved further. Now, 
Lillias, my girl, are you strong enough to help me to 
move a wounded man ? ” 

“ Try me, doctor.” 

0 I won’t have anything of the sort ! ” Thorne pro¬ 
tested, the colour flushing his drawn face only to fade 
away again. “ If you lend me your arm, doctor, I 
am sure I can get up.” 

“ All right,” said the doctor cheerfully, but there was 
an ironical smile under his grey moustache. “ A com¬ 
pound fracture is not much, of course ! Let me put my 
arm under your shoulders, so—now! Ah! we shall have 
to trust to you after all, Lillias,” he added coolly 
as Thorne made one effort and with a suppressed oath 
relapsed again into a swoon. 

“ How could you let him ? ” said Lillias reproach¬ 
fully, with an underlip that trembled. 

" Best thing that could happen to him. I’d rather 
move him while he’s unconscious. Now you take him 
like this—under the armpits-—and let me get a lift 
on him before he struggles. Mind that leg—I don’t 
know if the bone is splintered yet. We shall have to cut 
the puttee off,” he mused aloud as they lifted the dead 
weight of Thorne’s body between them, and carried 
it to the waiting car. " Lucky it wasn’t a boot. 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


185 

Lilli as, your parents never did a better thing than in 
creating that fine, supple body of yours ! You've 
the strength of a man added to the grace of a woman. 
Now then, get into the car and take the weight of his 
head and shoulders again." 

She had hardly waited to be told. With the instinct 
of her desire to serve she aided the doctor as skilfully 
as any fellow practitioner might have done, and as 
they drove slowly over the road that lay between 
them and the cottage Thorne's head rested for the 
few minutes against her breast as it might never do 
again, and for one wild moment her lips nearly touched 
his twitching face—nearly, but not quite. 

“ I should be no better than a selfish emotional girl 
like Alice if I did anything so silly—and when he is 
helpless and at my mercy ! " thought Lillias, and her 
strong young arms held the weight of Thorne's body 
without any more pressure than the doctor's had done. 
"He said good-bye to me yesterday—he meant it to be 
good-bye. I must always remember that, and take 
no advantage. . . 

Thorne was in too much pain to realise the situation, 
and hardly knew who was with him during that short 
painful drive and the getting him into the cottage and 
on to the broad old sofa in the familiar sitting-room. 

“ A lucky thing you have good solid furniture and none 
of those narrow couches, Lillias," said the doctor, who 
was familiar with all the cottagers, as well as being 
the medical adviser at the Place. It was only a 
swooning pain to Colonel Thorne, with flashes of 
consciousness during which he saw Dr. Matthews 
cutting the neatly folded puttee from his leg, and 


i86 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


winced almost before the swollen flesh was touched. 
He was highly strung as a racehorse, with very sensi¬ 
tive nerves, and though he made no murmur his face 
contracted under the necessary examination. 

“ Well ? ” he said with the impatience of pain, as 
the doctor raised himself at last and stood looking at 
him with contemplative eyes. . 

“ It’s broken in two places—a compound fracture, 
that lower one. Never mind, my dear Colonel—the 
bone isn’t sticking out through the flesh as I have seen 
it before now.” 

“ But how am I to get back to the Place ? Can you 
drive me in your car ? I was going to London this 
afternoon—no chance of that, I suppose ? ” 

The doctor laughed good-humouredly. “ Not the 
least, unless you court disaster. You must lie still and 
be patient. I am not even going to allow you to go 
back to the Place. I shall make free with Miss Daish’s 
cottage and turn her drawing-room into an temporary 
hospital. No use grumbling, Colonel—here you are 
and here you will stay.” 

“ But it’s impossible—I can’t put Miss Daish to 
such inconvenience. You must move me ! ” 

“ Don’t get excited, or you will have a temperature, 
and then I must send you a night nurse. Otherwise 
I think Lillias will manage perfectly with her know¬ 
ledge of First Aid, under me. She’s a capital nurse. 
I’ll give her a diploma if you like. Of cr^rse if you 
insist on some young woman in a uniform with more 
training and less common sense, I can get you one.” 

“ It’s impossible ! ” repeated Colonel Thorne, more 
to himself than to the doctor. He felt as if faced 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 187 

with the old Arab saying : “ Kismet—it is Destiny ! ” 
and for the first time his eyes met Lillias’, very grave 
and blue and without any of the dismay in his own. 
It seemed as if her beauty were a kind of mask that 
hid anything she might be feeling. He could see the 
beauty, but he could not see the woman behind it. 

“ It is not impossible at all,” said the doctor with 
patient good-humour. “ Your man, or Sir Henry’s 
if you haven’t brought a servant, can come over every 
morning and do what you want for you—shave you 
if you like—as long as he does not interfere with that 
leg. I’ll have nobody but Lillias or myself touch the 
splint. Come, Colonel Thorne, I think I’m doing you 
a good turn—most men would thank me for givingthem 
Miss Daish for a nurse. I must say you are not very 
gallant in your eagerness to get away ! ” 

He laughed roguishly, secure in the fact that Colonel 
Thorne was many years older than Lillias Daish, and 
that Lillias had been love-proof until she was regarded 
as a phenomenon, rather than a young woman, by 
the neighbourhood. Dr. Matthews was an old fellow 
himself and allowed to joke, and he had known Lillias 
from her childhood. Even Colonel Thorne’s personal 
charm and good looks might be discounted in the 
circumstances. 

But Teddy Thorne said to himself again : “ Kismet— 
it is Destiny ! ” with a sense of being but the sport of 
Fate. He had for once in his life resisted temptation, 
he had said good-bye to a woman who attracted him 
deeply, without even a kiss—almost—and he had really 
intended to run away from danger. And here was 
Fate, in the person of a stout provincial doctor. 


i88 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


thrusting him head foremost into the devil’s own snare, 
and smashing all his good intentions with the bludgeon 
of common sense. There was only one condoning 
factor in the situation, and that was the perfect 
composure of Lillias’ fair face. She looked concerned 
for his predicament, sympathetically ready to play the 
part of nurse assigned to her, equally compliant if he 
refused the hospitality of her cottage'—and nothing 
more. A sudden sense of extreme pique ousted all 
Thorne’s prudence, aided by the very present pain and 
exhaustion of his accident. 

“ Oh, have it your own way ! ” he said with rare 
ungraciousness. “ If Miss Daish can put up with me 
of course I’d rather stay where I am. I must have 
Saunders over here with some things I shall want, 
anyway. You’ll see to that—you must see to that, 
doctor ! ” 

And then that giddy faintness came back, and he 
was thankful to lie down and be attended to and 
drink something that Dr. Matthews assured him was 
a stimulant, but which certainly had a sedative effect 
upon his nerves, for presently he fell asleep. 

When he roused, various things seemed to be happen¬ 
ing. The cool parlour had altered to a temporary 
bedroom, and his servant was laying out his razors 
and other toilet necessaries on the round table. The 
window into the garden was open, and he saw a vista 
of golden-rod and ox-eye daisies with rambling roses 
between, and on the window-ledge was sitting a great 
tabby cat, looking at the birds and showing that his 
mouth watered by the little tremble of his lower jaw. 

“ I say, don’t let that cat come in and jump on my 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


189 

leg, Saunders ! ” said Colonel Thorne, as if it were his 
own rooms in town, and he had a right to dictate 
through the whole household. 

And Saunders said : “ No, sir—nice cat, sir ! very 
well behaved. Dr. Matthews is come back to help me 
lift you into bed, sir, if you’re ready ? ” 

The bed had been brought down as if by spirit hands, 
and stood where the chiffonier had been wont to be. 
(During part of his sleep Colonel Thorne remembered 
an impression that he was moving house.) He agreed 
to the removal, and between Dr. Matthews and his 
servant he was lifted without the jar he dreaded, and 
laid in coarse linen that smelt of lavender and set him 
thinking idly and pleasantly of Daish’s fields. Then 
they brought him some chicken deliciously cooked, 
and baked custard like cream (a regular invalid’s meal!), 
for it was late in the afternoon and he had had no 
food, and after that he felt drowsy again, and the 
bright garden, and the cat, and Saunders all faded 
away, and left him to fall asleep in fields of lavender. 

He did not see Lilli as again until the evening. Then 
she came into the room as naturally as if she had a 
right and a place in his fife, with a lamp in her hands 
which she set carefully behind him so that he could 
read the evening paper, and asked him when he would 
like his evening meal. She was wearing a dark thin 
gown a little open at the throat, and the braids of her 
sunny hair shone like new bronze coinage. He had 
never seen her in dark clothes before. ... He thought 
breathlessly how wonderful she would be in a black 
evening gown with her neck and arms bare, and forgot 
to answer her. 


igo 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


" Colonel Thorne ! ” she said with a startled con¬ 
fusion. She did not know if he were ill again, or vexed, 
or silent from some intention she could not fathom. 
Was he really angry because he was a prisoner here ? 
Ought she to have resisted the overmastering desire 
to keep him, and have aided and abetted when he 
wanted to risk being taken back to the Place ? Oh, 
why had she been so selfish, and so blind to his real 
reluctance to stav ? . . . 

In the midst of her humiliation she saw that he was 
holding out his hand to her. 

" Lillias, will you ever forgive me ? ” he said. 

She stood by his side, looking at him in her silent 
loveliness, with the guard of her pride upon her. 

" I do not understand," she said. 

"For staying here'—when I ought to have gone. I 
know I ought—but you said you would nurse me, and 
I wanted to stay. I have upset your whole house, 
and you will get bored sick with me—won’t you ? " 
She shook her head and the blue eyes lightened, but 
she did not smile. " Lillias, will you really nurse 
me ? " 

"I will do my best," said the girl, almost coldly in 
the effort she made not to take advantage of him. He 
did not mean anything really, she knew. The wooing 
voice and the dark eyes looking up at her—so dark 
with the recent pain !—would have been the same for 
any woman. But the temptation was on her to kneel 
down by him and tell him in a whisper that seemed to 
come by instinct that he was her darling and the only 
man who had ever made her feel as she did now, and 
to beg and pray that she might at least serve him 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


191 

while a blessed fate had given his life into her hands. 
Instead of which she stood by his side looking placidly 
beautiful and asked him if he could eat a little fish, 
and drink some of the champagne that Sir Henry had 
sent over. Dr. Matthews said he was to have a light 
diet. It did not seem worth while to cook more than 
he would eat, or to open the wine if he would not have 
it. Lillias was always practical. 

• • • • • 

It had been a fair day, this one that had altered 
Colonel Thorne's plans with fateful results, and other 
destinies as well. The harvest at Leith was nearly 
all in, and the men sang in rough chorus as they 
brought in the last waggon loads. It was, however, 
not one of the regular old harvest-home songs, or some 
local ditty that would have pleased a student of folk¬ 
lore. Leith was too near to London to remain un¬ 
sophisticated, despite the unusual type of its master. 
What the men sang was one of the latest favourites from 
the music-halls, or, as they prefer to style themselves 
now, the variety stages, and the inappropriateness of 
the words mattered nothing to them because of the 
lilt of the ragtime : 

“ I know—I know—I know a bit of life about the dear old 
Cit—— 

Cornin’ and goin’,— 

You bet I’m IT 1 

And what I don’t know isn't worth knowinY* 

The boy Charley lifted his head with a sudden 
contraction of his facial muscles that was almost a 
grimace. If a clown writhed in pain he might look 
so in the midst of his merriment, and indeed it stopped 


192 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


the faint smile on the small nervous lips and seemed 
to jar on his ear,for he did not attempt to join in the 
chorus, though he was sitting on the side of the waggon 
between Bill Somers and old David Adam, and both 
of them were adding to the somewhat eccentric har¬ 
mony. Charley had been unusually quiet all the 
afternoon, for his sharp tongue was generally at work 
if his hands were idle. But to-day he had employed 
his hands rather than his tongue, and had done his 
best to take his share of the labour, scaring birds from 
the corn, or standing patiently at the heads of his 
friends the horses when he could do nothing else. 

“ Join in, mate ! ” said Somers good-naturedly, 
nudging the boy with his elbow. 

“ ‘ Cornin’ and goin'— 

You bet I’m IT !— 

And what I don't know isn’t worth knowin’ 1 ” 

Can’t yer sing ? ” 

" I don’t know the bloomin’ ’ymn,” said Charley 
curtly, turning his little sunburnt face from the man 
and almost shivering. It seemed an odd confession 
for a London arab who had all his wits about him in 
the streets, for the song had been whistled and sung 
and bandied from mouth to mouth until it was as 
familiar as the National Anthem. 

“ Let him be—he’s tired,” said old David with 
unusual gentleness. “ He’ve done a fair day’s work 
for onc’t, and the heat sweats it out of us men, let alone 
the lads.” He stretched his lean figure with the con¬ 
ceit of his prime, for he hated to acknowledge himself 
less vigorous than younger men ; but Bill forbore to 
laugh, though his lips broadened in a smile as he took 
up the burden of the song again—Carlotta Edison^, 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


193 

song, that had caused the Palace Theatre to shake with 
applause many and many a time ! 

“ I know—I know—I know a bit of life about the dear old 
Cit— 

Cornin’ and goin’,— 

You bet I’m IT !— 

And what I don’t know isn’t worth knowin’ ! ” 

John Daish left the reaped fields with the last of 
the labourers, and throwing his leg over the farm pony, 
rode home in the early evening, for the last days of 
August were drawing in. He was glad that the harvest 
was gathered before the fine weather broke, and that 
the men seemed satisfied—an important point to the 
farmer of to-day, both as to wages and to entertain¬ 
ment. They had worked overtime to carry the corn, 
and had not grumbled. There would be a sub¬ 
stantial harvest-home for them to-night in the lower 
end of the large granary, where the tables had been 
set and spread by Mrs. Skelton and the farm girls. 
The housekeeper's work at harvest time was by no 
means the lightest at Leith, for she had to prepare and 
cook for fifty people at least. 

Daish had not seen Charley all day save at a dis¬ 
tance, doing odd jobs for the men and apparently 
happy and engaged. He supposed the boy was enjoy¬ 
ing the new experience of harvesting, and did not take 
more notice of him for reasons of policy. There had 
been talk enough and some jealousy of his harbouring 
the waif and then giving him his protection, always 
fostered and kept alive by Mrs. Skelton’s animosity. 
She was a woman with a tongue like a file ; and it was 

natural that the men, some of whom had sons of their 

N 


194 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


own, should resent an outsider getting a berth on the 
farm rather than their own boys. John Daish would 
have liked to speak with his “ Lavender lad ” and 
to be amused with his comments on the harvesting, 
but he resisted the impulse and went back to the 
house to wash and change his working clothes before 
he took the head of the long table in the distillery. 
He always dined with the hands at harvest-home, and 
fifty men, women, and boys sat down with him. 

As he crossed the road from the house to the great 
barn he paused a moment and looked back across his 
land with a sense of rest and peace that he remembered 
wistfully long after. A pale gilt moon hung in the 
arc of heaven, and the velvet hills were folded quietly 
to sleep. From the granary came the clatter of knives 
and forks already, and the sound of laughter and jests 
that would hush themselves a little, so soon as he 
entered. Daish lingered a moment, looking at the 
deserted stackyard, the dusky buildings of the stables 
and cowhouses, and the idle farm implements. He 
wondered for the fifth time where Charley was. 

Then a hand touched his arm timidly, and he turned 
anpd looked down into the boy’s face. Perhaps it 
was the mingling of moonlight and dusk that made it 
look so tense and colourless, and the eyes so tragic. 

" I want to ask you something, guv’nor.” 

“ Well, laddie ? " 

“ You’re always at me to learn something besides 
the farming—you want me to study ? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” said Daish honestly. “ I think you 
have something in that head of yours that’s different 
to most farm-boys, Charley.” 


KISMET—IT IS DESTINY 


195 


" I’ll learn if you’ll teach me—I won’t go to school.” 

Wilful and wayward as ever,Charley was yet making a 
concession to his master’s wish. Hitherto he had refused 
to read anything but the picture papers, and had threat¬ 
ened to run away again if Daish pressed the question of 
sending him to some place of technical instruction. The 
farmer caught at the chance of this conciliatory mood. 

“ I can teach you in the evenings, enough to find 
out what your real bent is,” he said with suppressed 
eagerness, oblivious of the fact that he was giving up 
such little leisure as he had himself. “ But you’ll 
have to study even if you feel sleepy. How will you 
stand the later hours ? ” 

A curious smile widened the boy’s lips without rising 
to the tragedy of his eyes. " I can stand late hours,” 
he said quietly. 

“ Then will you come into the house after dark, 
when the men have gone to their own cottages ? I’ll 
let you into the parlour by the window. There’s no 
need to let Mrs. Skelton know.” The big handsome 
man looked almost ashamed of himself, and as if he 
were doing something wrong in his own house by giving 
an hour or so to teaching the sharp-witted boy who 
had won his interest. But a quick look of pleasure 
or relief dawned in Charley’s face for the first time. 

“ Right-o ! ” he said. “ I’ll get in, no fear. Look 
for me to-night, and the old Skeleton shan’t catch me 
What time does she turn in ? ” 

“ About half-past nine ; she may be later to-night 
because of the harvest.” 

Charley nodded, and slipped into the distillery like 
a little shadow just as one of the men came to the door 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


196 

to look out and see if the master were coming, for the 
table was tired of waiting. John Daish went in to his 
last duty with an odd sense of pleasure to come in 
his heart, that made him a yet more genial host to 
his men than usual. And yet it was strange that he 
should so look forward to the stolen hours with his 
“ Lavender lad,” the secret understanding between 
them, the quiet study together while the old house 
grew still and Mrs. Skelton and the maids slept. He 
did not ask himself what the attraction was-—he never 
dreamed of anything but a new and absorbing interest 
in the unusual character of the boy, half gipsy and 
half genius, who was beginning to respond to him like 
some wild creature that is growing tame. 

Some hours later he came back to the house, went 
into the parlour and shut the door, ostensibly for a 
last pipe before he went to bed. The kitchen was dark, 
and he could hear Mrs. Skelton moving about overhead 
already. The window stood open, and he went towards 
it as if drawn by some unseen power, and peered out 
into the garden, smelling the faint sweetness of tobacco 
plants and night-flowering stocks. He leaned into 
the dewy darkness, wondering if Charley were already 
there, and his heart sank with disappointment as he 
remembered the boy’s impish caprice and that it was 
much more likely he had fallen asleep in the loft over 
the stables, tired out with his long day. 

Then he heard the gurgle of a low laugh behind him, 
and turning saw something creep out from the low deep 
recess beside the empty fireplace. 

“ Charley ? ” he said breathlessly. 

“ Guv’nor ! ” said the boy. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE DROWNING LADY 

Mrs. Skelton was a strong-willed, strong-minded 
woman in her daily walk of life ; but like most people 
with little education or experience she was intensely 
superstitious, and her weak spot was her fear of the 
supernatural. Leith farmhouse was not haunted, but 
there was an uncomfortable story attached to the 
property in the tradition of a young girl having drowned 
herself in the very bathing-pool where Charley was 
so fond of playing truant. The figure of the girl was 
supposed to haunt the dusk, rush down to the water 
and throw herself in, her arms above her head and 
her ghastly face fully visible in an unearthly aura of 
light that surrounded her. 

Mrs. Skelton would not have passed the bathing- 
pool after sunset for any consideration whatever, and 
when she went to her friends, the lodge-keepers at the 
Place, she was obliged to walk a mile out of her way 
going home, to avoid the little stream that meandered 
from Sir Henry’s home park down to the farm, crossing 
the road just at the turning to Lillias’ cottage. She 
was superstitious about seeing the new moon through 
glass also, and hearing the robins “ weep ” in winter, 
and bringing whitethorn into the house, and driving 
away a black cat. 


4 


197 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


198 

It was through the last stray cat to come to Leith 
that the boy Charley unfortunately got to know of 
her vulnerable spot, and to plot a revenge upon her 
for many a small unkindness and slight as well as her 
open hostility. There was little of the Christian in John 
Daish’s foundling at present, and he by no means turned 
the other cheek for blows. Rather he preferred the Old 
Testament adage of an eye for an eye, and acted on it* 

He found his friend Hector one day growling at a 
skinny framework of a cat who was spitting at him 
with every hair erect, and balancing herself upon the 
kitchen window-sill. Hector’s attitude becoming too 
menacing, the cat jumped into the kitchen, and Charley 
followed through the door with the really good- 
natured desire to save the stray from being hunted 
out with a broom, as he fully expected. He was not 
himself welcome in the kitchen, and he grabbed at 
the cat and was going to beat a retreat with it when 
Mrs. Skelton’s voice stopped him. 

“ Here, you boy, what are you doing to the cat ? 
Whose is it ? ” 

“ Dunno,” said Charley, pausing in his flight. 
“ Hector nearly got her—she’s a stray.” 

“Did she come in of herself ? ” 

“ Yes—jumped through the window. I didn’t 'elp 
’er,” said Charley, thinking that it was his agency 
that was suspected. 

u Then you leave her alone,” said the housekeeper 
unexpectedly. “I’ll not have a black cat turned out 
of this house, but you can get out yourself. What 
are you doing loafing about when the pigs need feed¬ 
ing ? Off you go, or I’ll make you.” 


THE DROWNING LADY 


199 


She had filled a saucer with milk during her rapid 
speech and placed it on the speckless floor for the cat, 
who drank thirstily, splashing over the saucer in her 
eagerness but meeting with no rebuff. Charley went, 
with a grimace, but he had learned something through 
his ill-appreciated effort on the cat’s behalf, and his 
quick brain was already deducing the probability of 
Mrs. Skelton’s belief in “ luck ” from her instant 
adoption of the black cat. 

“ If she’s afraid to turn out a cat ’cos it’s black she’s 
afraid of other things,” thought the boy with wicked 
joy. “ I’ll break her looking-glass for her to give 
her seven years’ misery, and trim her bonnet with 
peacock’s feathers, the old scarecrow ! My ! what a 
joy ride. Why didn’t I think of it before ? ” 

These unamiable intentions underwent various 
changes for the discomfiture of Mrs. Skelton, but could 
not devise anything that quite satisfied a desire for 
revenge. It was Bill Somers’ missus who warned 
Charley of the ghost story, which came as an uncon¬ 
scious revelation. 

“ If you go bathing so late you’ll see the Drowning 
Lady ! ” she threatened, with intent to give the farm- 
boy a fright. “ You’ll never forget it all your days if 
you do.” 

“ ’O’s ’er ? ” asked Charley coolly, sticking impudent 
thumbs into the pockets of poor Leslie’s knickerbockers. 

“ A girl what drowned herself in your pool, through 
being no better than she ought,” said Mrs. Somers 
virtuously. 0 You’ll see her some day sudden, just 
as it’s getting dusk, and she throws up her arms and 
screams-—awful! ” 


200 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Charley's black eyes opened wide with unholy 
interest and a dawning idea. “ What she look like ? " 
“ Like a drowned woman already, they say, with a 
face as white as chalk and long red 'air." Mrs. Somers 
wished to make the ghost as horrible as might be, but 
Charley’s shameless interest did not betoken fear. 
“ If she once ketches you she’ll drag you under ! " 
she said, embroidering the tale for her own benefit. 
“ You'd better not go bathing evenings, and coming 
home late." 

“ So as Bill don’t litter down for me, and comes in 
to supper earlier," said Charley sarcastically. He 
never had bathed in the evenings, but he was fond of 
loitering down by the pool and climbing, monkey 
fashion, into the forked branches of an old beech. 
“ Well, if I meet the young woman with the carrots 
on 'er 'ead, perhaps we’ll go diving together. * Good¬ 
evening,' I’ll say. * Give us a lead, miss.' * Lor,' sez 
she, * it’s so long since I ’ad a young man to talk to 
I've almost forgot 'ow ! ’ " 

“ She’ll say something worse than that to yer, once 
she ketches yer ! " said Bill’s missus warningly, much 
chagrined that her ghost story had failed to scare her 
hearer away from the pond as she intended. For Bill 
had often been beguiled into “ doing a bit for the lad " 
when Charley shirked work, to save his getting into 
trouble, and was in consequence late for his supper, 
as the boy knew. Mrs. Somers shot her last bolt at 
a venture, falling back upon the housekeeper's dreaded 
personality to champion a lost cause. 

“ Even Mrs. Skelton’s scared of the Drowning Lady 
•—she’s sure she’ll see her some day I " 


THE DROWNING LADY 


201 


The evil star of Carlotta Edison was in the ascendant. 

Charley was thoughtful for some days, and paid 
more than one surreptitious visit to the village with 
his master’s bicycle, though he did not go to the post- 
office this time. He was not given to seeking the 
housekeeper of his own free will, and Mrs. Skelton was 
the more surprised when he knocked politely on the 
kitchen door one day with a message from Sir Henry’s 
lodge-keeper’s wife. 

“ Mrs. Paignton stopped me as I was coming back 
from bathing this morning, and said she’d be glad to 
see you any time you was over that way,” he said in 
an unusually subdued manner. “ She’s got a brood 
o’ young turkeys, and afraid she can’t rear ’em.” 

“ I’ll go over this evening—I’ve not much to do 
after tea,” said Mrs. Skelton promptly. She was 
always ready to do a neighbour a turn, particularly 
when it asserted her own superior knowledge. “ I 
could have told her July broods were no good—nothing 
later than May. And they’re sure to droop soon as 
they get their combs.” 

“ I dunno. That was the message,” said Charley 
with well-assumed indifference, and slouched off to 
the fields, where he was so unusually industrious in 
scaring birds all the afternoon that Daish himself 
gave him leave of absence to go down to the pool if 
he wanted to. 

“ It’s hot weather, laddie, and you’ve been at it 
all the time,” he said with that gentler note in his 
voice that it often took now that he had become 
Charley’s tutor. “ Don’t be late to-night,” he added 
guardedly. “ You are losing your sleep, and you want 


202 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


it at your age. The sooner we get to work the sooner 
I can let you go.’’ 

“ It don’t hurt me, guv’nor,” Charley assured him, 
but there was something furtive in his own manner, 
almost as if he were ashamed. “ I’ll be in at nine, 
soon as it’s dark. I’ve had a go at them sums, chalked 
up on the stable door.” 

“ Well done ! ” said Daish, laughing, for arithmetic 
was not Charley’s forte. He was far quicker at the 
elementary Latin that Daish was teaching him, with 
apologies to his own good sense. What could a farm 
boy do with Latin—or for that matter with the 
rudiments of science that the farmer-scholar was 
instilling into the eager mind ? But he dreamed of 
other careers for his " Lavender lad ” to that of the 
farm labourer. One of the bribes he had offered, in 
order to get the boy to work, was the water-colour 
drawing of the lavender that Charley had so much 
liked. It was a personal sacrifice, for Daish appreciated 
and valued the little sketch above all the others in 
his possession, and it marks the stage which his absorp¬ 
tion in his protege had reached that he should have 
even offered it. He was aware too that everyone he 
knew would have condemned hi mas insane or infatuated 
to give a valuable drawing to the waif of the London 
streets who owned no more than the clothes which had 
been bestowed on him in charity. And yet he had 
promised it as a prize should Charley pass a certain 
standard of his master’s setting, and consent to further 
tuition later on. The boy’s face had flushed and then 
paled at the suggestion. 

“ D’you mean that you’ll give me the lavender 


THE DROWNING LADY 


203 

picture for my own ? ” he demanded, with a veritable 
hunger in his black eyes. 

“ Yes, when you’ve satisfied me that you are worth 
the teaching, Charley. But it will be hard work— 
and you’ll have to go to school some day.” 

The desire faded out of the curious, vivid face, and 
the old stubbornness came back. 

“ I shall never do that,” he said—obstinately, to 
John Daish’s mind, which had no clue to the impossi¬ 
bility. “ I’ll learn with you so long as you’ll teach me 
•—but I’d die shut up in a school with a lot of classes 
and rules. I’ll have to give up the lavender picture.” 

He glanced with eyes that were almost moist at 
the wonderful little sketch of his desire, for the con¬ 
versation took place one night in the parlour during 
the lesson hour. Daish laid his broad hand on the 
round head—the black hair felt like a mat for 
thickness—and his smile made his handsome face 
beautiful. 

“ Wouldn’t you try it to please me, laddie ? ” he 
said, and wondered at the desperate, despairing glance 
of Charley’s eyes. 

“ I’d do almost anything to please you, guv’nor,” 
he answered with dangerous meaning. “ Only—don’t 
send me away ! ” 

John was more moved than he thought it wise to 
show—strangely moved, and with a heart that seemed 
full of protective tenderness. 

“ We won’t part, Charley,” he promised blindly. 
" But you shall win the lavender picture yet.” 

But the boy shook his head with prophetic sadness. 
“ I shall never do anything to deserve it—I’ll never 


204 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


have a right to it,” he said. “ But I've got it here. ” 
•—he touched his forehead. “ And I can see it if I 
shut my eyes. You can’t take that from me ! ” 

• • » • • 

Mrs. Skelton started for the lodge at the Place later 
than she had intended, or else the kitchen clock was 
slow for once. She relied implicitly on the kitchen 
clock, which she always wound and set herself, and 
she did not dream that the most incorrigible of farm- 
boys would dare to tamper with it while she was 
skimming cream in the dairy. She found that Charley’s 
story of the young brood of turkeys was true in fact, 
and that Mrs. Paignton had said that she should be 
thankful for Mrs. Skelton’s advice. Only, the boy 
had not met the lodge-keeper’s wife by the pool at all, 
or been stopped by her. He had been loafing about 
the lodge and asked for a bit of bread and butter, as 
he had not had his breakfast and was hungry. Then 
he had got asking questions about the chicks, and it 
was rather by his suggestion than hers that Mrs. 
Paignton had applied to Mrs. Skelton for advice. 

“ That boy has got a liar’s mouth ! He can’t speak 
straight all through, whatever he says,” said the 
housekeeper, by no means mollified that Mrs. Paignton 
assured her that Charley had said it was his firm belief 
that “ Mrs. Skelton knew more about the ’ole bloomin’ 
farm than any man on it! ” 

Having condemned the place where the chicks were 
at run as too damp, and warned Mrs. Paignton that 
they would never stand cold, Mrs. Skelton started for 
home again, a good hour later than she had intended. 
It was growing dusk, and she had to pass the haunted 


THE DROWNING LADY 


205 


pool! But if she went round by the road, as she usually 
did, she would be late with John Daish's supper, and 
to do her justice she was not a woman to allow her 
fears to come before her duty. She walked fast to race 
the coming night, and her face was a little whiter 
than its usual brick-red as she neared the great trees 
that overhung the cool, deep water. 

It was twilight in the fields by now, but it was really 
dark under the trees. Mrs. Skelton felt her heart 
thump and her hands tremble as she neared the place 
of the tragedy, and kept her eyes steadily away from 
the pool. In consequence she saw nothing until her 
ears were assailed by a splash and a shriek, and she 
whirled round against her will to face the horror behind 
her. Neither the splash nor the shriek had been at 
all ghostly, and had she not been almost delirious with 
fright, Mrs. Skelton would have realised that a light 
but very real body had just dived into the water with 
a stage scream that would have done credit to a Surrey- 
side melodrama, to emerge dripping and hastily wrap 
itself in an old dust-sheet and arrange an extemporary 
wig of flowing red wool! But she was too terrified to 
reason, and with a shriek far more real than the 
ghost's she started to run in the direction of the 
nearest dwelling-house—a little two-roomed cottage 
about a hundred yards off—with the ghost in hot 
pursuit, flapping its drapery and uttering sounds that 
were half choked with impish laughter. 

The pursuit ended at the cottage door. Mrs. 
Skelton, her face leaden with her terror, fell rather than 
walked into the little kitchen where an old woman was 
boiling her frugal supper of potatoes. She was the 


206 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


poorest of the poor, and lived by such scanty jobs 
as even her cottage neighbours could give her, her old- 
age pension, and firing gathered from the hedgerows. 
But Mrs. Skelton had sometimes given her waste food 
that was not good for the fowls, and from the lofty 
position of Leith kitchen had played the patron. The 
old crone was nearly as frightened as the housekeeper 
on seeing her fall into the room, and with some reason, 
for Mrs. Skelton could neither breathe nor speak. She 
lay cowering against the floor, her face that unnatural 
colour, and then suddenly lifting her eyes uttered 
another of those dreadful cries, for the Thing of her 
dread had appeared at the window and was capering 
with derision at her plight. 

The old woman who owned the cottage, however, 
was less sensible of ghosts than Mrs. Skelton, or per¬ 
haps her bleared eyes served her better after all. She 
hobbled over to the window and perceived the ludicrous 
apparition at close range—the chalked face, the red- 
wool hair, the dragging sheet. It was more like the 
bogey made out of a turnip-head than the unfortunate 
of the pool. Charley was, indeed, beginning to be a 
little frightened over Mrs. Skelton’s state, though he 
rejoiced over his revenge, and did not disappear 
quite so quickly as he might have done when the owner 
of the cottage looked through the window. He 
vanished after a minute, and made tracks for the pool 
where he had left his clothes, but he had betrayed him¬ 
self in spite of the disguise. 

“ Don’t ’ee take on so now, Mrs. Skelton, ma’am ! ” 
mumbled the old woman, hobbling back to that pros¬ 
trate figure on the floor. “ Ye’ve had a fright and 


THE DROWNING LADY 


20 7 

don’t know what ye do. Come and sit in the cushion 
chair, and I’ll warm 'ee up some tea.” 

She led her trembling guest to the fire, and seated 
her with her back to the window, but Mrs. Skelton 
still clung to her with desperate hands. 

“ Is it gone ? ” she asked, and the words rattled in 
her throat. “ I knew I should see her some day— 
the drowning girl of the pool! ” 

The old crone broke into a wheezing laugh that half 
choked her. “ Why, ’twas nothing but that dratted 
boy dressed up ! ” she said. “ He be a young devil! 
’Tis the same I saw give the poor gentleman a fall when 
I be gathering sticks in the spinney. He’s not right, 
for sure, and should be kept to home. Rushing out 
on the horse just as ’e must ’a rushed out on you to¬ 
night, ma’am ! ” 

The tea was reviving Mrs. Skelton, but it did not 
entirely account for the sudden access of colour in 
her face. She sat up, and her eyes narrowed with 
anger and excitement. 

“ That boy, you say, playing a trick on me—on 
me ? And the same thing in the spinney when the 
Colonel’s horse took fright and bolted ? Tell me again, 
Marty—did you see it ? Why have you never told ? ” 

Marty began to be frightened in her turn, and to 
wish she had not betrayed her own confidence. “ I 
was just a-gathering sticks'—and Sir ’Enry ’e alius 
allows us do that ! I saw the poor gentleman fall, 
and I thought he was dead. Don’t tell on it, Mrs. 
Skelton, ma’am, or mebbe I’ll have trouble. It was 
that I was afeared of at the time, and the inquest and 
all, and me asked so many questions ! ” 


208 


THE LAVENDER LAD 

% 

“ Colonel Thorne isn’t dead,” said Mrs. Skelton, 
restraining her eagerness, “ and you won’t get into 
any trouble, Marty; I’ll see to that. Tell me again. 
You are sure it was the boy—the one that the master 
took on at Leith ? ” 

•* Certain sure,” said Marty, foreseeing many more 
odd scraps from the kitchen, poor soul, for her informa¬ 
tion. “A long stick in his hand, he had, and rushed 
out at the horse to frighten him a-purpose. He made 
off quick when the gentleman fell. ’Tis sheer wicked¬ 
ness in him, to frighten folks like as he did you to-night. 
And I was frightened too, seeing the gentleman lie so 
still. But miss from the cottage comes along with 
widow Smith’s daughter, and then the doctor’s motor¬ 
car, and they took him away and so I never said 
nothin’.” 

Mrs. Skelton’s smouldering anger against Charley 
was in a blaze. She had been made to look almost 
ridiculous in the eyes of this old crone whom she had 
patronised, and for all she knew others might have 
seen her flying in the dusk with that burlesque spectre 
in pursuit—a silly spectacle ! She was not popular in 
the neighbourhood, but none of the cottagers’children 
would have ventured to make a guy of her as Charley 
had successfully done. It was a stupid, childish trick, 
a little vulgar and certainly ill-natured, but not the 
criminal offence into which Mrs. Skelton’s passion 
magnified it. Marty’s recognition of the boy and her 
betrayal of his part in Thorne’s accident put a weapon 
into Mrs. Skelton’s hands that she meant to use with 
full effect without acknowledging her own humiliation. 

She walked home somewhat stiffly and slowly, for 


THE DROWNING LADY 


209 


she was an elderly woman, and a shock such as she had 
had was not good for her. The reaped fields on either 
side the road were grey with peace, and the silence of 
the evening like a thought of God ; but her grim face 
was by no means shaken from its purpose as she laid 
John Daish’s supper. She was waiting for him to come 
in to make her loud accusations, and she gloried in it, 
though she knew that she was going to harass and even 
distress him. A jealous love is more merciless to its 
object than even a selfish one, for it is more blind. 
Mrs. Skelton would have sacrificed herself to the death 
for her master, and have worked herself to the bone ; 
but when it came to the test of another to whom he 
showed preference, then she sacrificed him. 

He was coming now; she heard his cheery whistle 
in the porch, for he went happily of late, and Hector’s 
whine of greeting. She turned to meet the beauty of 
his smiling face with hate in her eyes, though not for 
him, and no more hesitated to strike than if, being of 
intention a murderess, she had seized one of the shining 
knives on the table and plunged it into his heart. 


© 


CHAPTER XII 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 

Colonel Thorne never could look back on the weeks 

that followed his accident without a confused sense of 

rapture and discomfort. Both were due to Lillias, 

for if his racing pulses made everything but her presence 

a secondary consideration, he felt that he was at a 

very great disadvantage before her, and it galled him 

as it would not have done a younger man. Teddy 

Thorne was very apt to judge by externals, and he 

trusted to his smartness and gay good-humour to 

van him favour from women now that his youth was 

past-—an error of judgment, since it was the personality 

of the man to which he owed his success, and it was 

a more potent factor with every year of his life. But 

he was not astute enough to recognise this, and in 

consequence he fretted himself a good deal during his 

convalescence. How could a fellow be smart lying in 

bed in an improvised bedroom, with his hair ruffled 

as well as his temper, and an old cricket blazer over his 

silk pyjamas ? True, he insisted on shaving every 

day, but his fool of a man always placed the looking- 

glass so that he could not see to brush his hair every 

hour or so as vanity prompted. And his usual good 

spirit* had deserted him under stress of circumstances* 

210 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


211 


“ I was a fool to think whether I would go out of her 
life in time ! ” he told himself bitterly. “ She would 
not care now whether I went or stayed. This will 
disillusion her for ever, and it only makes me more 
infatuated with her every day that she acts as my nurse.” 

Xillias treated him with a kind of firm indulgence, 
as a sick child who must be humoured for the time 
being. She was invariably kind but equally decided 
when it was a question of the doctor’s orders. And 
she seemed to grow a little graver day by day which 
he put down to boredom from the sick-nursing and 
the disorder and upset in her home. He could not 
tell that she was neither bored nor disillusioned, and 
that as the days passed she was asking herself with 
blank dismay what she was to do to fill her life when 
it was all over—when he was gone ? He had never 
shown temper or dissatisfaction; he had always been 
most humbly grateful for all she had done for him. He 
must have a very sweet disposition, she ruminated, 
as well as the quick attractive personality that had taken 
her slower senses captive. Lilli as had nursed her 
father when he had the gout, and was philosophically 
of opinion that all men shouted at their womenkind 
when they were ill, and would hurl things about the 
room when the mood took them. She supposed they 
could not help it. Her mother had taught her that 
they must be humoured, not argued with, and that 
women were different—their virtue was endurance. 
She applied this doctrine to Colonel Thorne, adapted 
herself and her household to his needs almost before 
he knew them, and showed a patience and unflagging 
devotion that was part of her traditions. Naturally, 


212 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


he thought her an angel in mind as well as face, and, 
being a gentleman, he did not swear or fling the pillows 
through the open window where the cat sat on the out¬ 
side ledge for a target—as she had quite expected. 
Naturally, also, she was inclined to idealise in her 
turn. It was very unfortunate for both of them. 

The problem that troubled her most was how to keep 
him amused with the small resources she possessed, 
and not allow him to grow restless and insist on moving 
before the leg was safe. Dr. Matthews had impressed 
this upon her, and her own heart unconsciously im¬ 
pressed it more. He must not go away at present— 
Dr. Matthews had said so, and if there were a twinkle 
in his eye Lillias was too single-minded to see it. She 
told Thorne about her bees, which were not only bees 
but personalities to her, but she was not deluded by 
any sentimentality even over the marvellous work of 
the hives. 

“ Bees are said to reason/' she said in her dis¬ 
passionate fashion, “ but their judgment is often misled 
by situation, so I don’t think it is true. The first 
swarm will always go back to the place of the old brood- 
chamber, and though they find it * swept and garnished/ 
as the Bible says, it does not make them suspicious. 
They set to, queen and all, to repopulate the new 
chamber, while all the while I have only put the old 
one at the back of the hive ! And there’s another 
thing that makes me think them rather stupid—the 
bees who are out gathering honey at the time will 
return to the old place and the new brood-chamber, 
until those at home in the old one come to the con¬ 
clusion that honey time is over, rear their new queen, 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


213 

and stay at home contentedly to raise a new colony 
for me." 

Then she would pause and flush, afraid that she was 
boring him. The only thing that embarrassed Lillias 
was when she had to talk much instead of listening. 
But she was so mortally afraid of his getting restive 
over his convalescence that she was ready to do any¬ 
thing that should amuse or distract him. Thorne 
himself solved the difficulty one evening when she 
brought him the evening paper that was always sent 
over from the Place. 

“ I think I shall have to teach you to play whiskey 
poker,” he said. “ Are you shocked ? ” 

“ I am very fond of cards,” said Lillias seriously, 
and quite unconscious of the unexpectedness of her 
remark. “When father was alive we used to play 
whist, if we could get a neighbour to come in. I 
missed it very much after his death. Mother didn’t 
care for it much. She never liked to play anything 
really but Old Maid.” 

Her beautiful mouth widened into an irresistible 
smile that would have made a monk ready to gamble 
with her, and she gave that gurgling laugh again. 
Colonel Thorne watched her with eyes that he vainly 
hoped were entirety impersonal in their appreciation. 

“ I can’t think of a more inappropriate game for 
you to play ! ” he said. 

But Lillias made no answer. She had a way of 
dropping all allusions to marriage or male attentions 
into the deep well of her silence, the waters of which 
were too unfathomable even for a splash of protest. 
As a matter of fact she had nothing to say, and so she 


214 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


said nothing; but the very simplicity of her reason 
foiled Ted Thorne as no other woman had ever foiled 
him. He sat propped up on his pillows, trying to read 
her unbetraving face while she fetched a pack of cards 
and sat down to her lesson. 

At the end of the evening he was obliged to confess 
that her statement was no boast—she was very fond 
of cards, and she could follow their quaint combinations 
and master the design of a game with the ease of an 
expert. Whiskey poker was abandoned for ecarte, 
and ecarte for piquet. Then Thorne began to be 
proud of his pupil, and he taught her bridge as far as 
it can be taught between two players. The habit of 
whist helped her, blit she had grasped the game in 
two lessons, and as they played night after night he 
began to see that with practice she would be not only 
his equal but his superior. And he was one of the 
best players in his club ! 

“ You haven’t made a fault,” he said at last, 
looking at her with a little flush of pleasure in his 
surprise. “ You played that hand better than I should 
have done. I begin to think your talents are wasted— 
instead of keeping bees and chickens you ought to be 
in a bridge set, in town.” 

“ Perhaps I should not do so well playing with four— 
it must be very difficult,” said Lillias without elation. 

“ Not a bit—except that you would find that your 
partner was a fool compared to yourself ! But we 
ought to get your cousin to come over one evening and 
play cut-throat—three-handed auction.” 

"I don’t think he would come in the evenings,” 
said Lillias, and a slightly puzzled look crept into the 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


215 


large, finely-coloured eyes, that was not quite trouble. 
“ I do not know what John is doing in his evenings 
now, but he will not come out, though he used to be 
fond of a walk before he went to bed. I think he must 
be studying again, and it is not good for him after his 
work is done.” 

Thorne did not answer, but the puzzled look in her 
eyes was reflected in his, and now it was very much 
more like trouble. The lavender farmer had been in 
to see him several times—always in the daytime, now 
he thought of it—and had been heartily sympathetic 
about the accident and most simply pleased that his 
cousin should put her household at the service of the 
gentleman from the Place, Sir Henry’s friend, a man 
he had himself found a pleasant companion and a good 
sportsman. There was not the least hesitation on 
John’s part in offering Colonel Thorne the hospitality 
of the cottage, any more than there had been on Lillias’. 
There was a certain dignity about the Daish attitude 
of mind in that they never had a suspicious or ugly 
thought unless it were proved to them, and then they 
were—perhaps for this very reason—more righteously 
angry than more cynical folk, because the very gener¬ 
osity of this confidence had been outraged, as Cousin 
Sarah Anne Jennings had discovered. No reference 
had ever been made to the cause of the accident 
beyond Colonel Thorne’s brief statement that the cob 
had shied badly and he was riding carelessly. But 
sometimes his heart sank when he thought of John’s 
eyes being opened to the truth—if they ever were. 
What was Carlotta doing all this while ? Had she 
been wise in time and left Leith as he suggested ? 


2 l6 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Only once did he hear her referred to, and that was 
when Li Hi as asked after the boy Charley with an 
indulgent smile. 

“ I hope Charley is going on all right, John,” she 
said, “ and pleasing you.” 

“ Yes, I think he is doing very well,” said the farmer, 
and his deeply blue eyes cleared as if with an inner 
light. " He has taken to study at last,” 

“ I am glad the clothes fitted. He looks less of a 
little vagabond.” 

“ It was very kind of you, Lillias.’' 

Colonel Thorne looked out of the window at the 
tabby cat, who was crouched there in a kind of dis¬ 
dain of Hector lying at the garden gate. Beyond the 
cat’s great brindled head a cluster of nasturtiums 
climbed over the wooden fence and made a running 
flame of colour against the dark trees beyond. They 
were blooming so freely that there seemed more flowers 
than leaves. Lillias had once told him that they 
reminded her of marmalade, and he smiled mechani¬ 
cally now at the literal simile—for the liquid orange 
and yellow was really very much like the preserve— 
though for the moment he did not really take in 
Tommy’s watchful attitude, or the flowers. He was 
thinking of Charley, and himself, and Lillias and John, 
and the disguised girl’s passionate denunciation of him 
as well as herself in coming into these people’s quiet 
lives to derange and embitter them. . . . 

John left soon afterwards without another reference 
to Charley, nor did he come very often, though he sent 
up every luxury that Leith afforded, for the invalid— 
butter and cream, and peaches ripened on a south wall, 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


217 

and late peas. It seemed almost as if his gifts were 
meant to excuse his presence. 

But one evening, when the solo bridge was absorbing 
both patient and nurse, there was a sudden stir of 
someone approaching the cottage, the sound of Mrs. 
Smith going slowly down the passage, and then her 
knock upon the parlour door. 

“ It’s Mr. Daish, miss—he wants to know if the 
Colonel is well enough for a visitor ? ” 

“ Are you ? ” said Lilli as with deference. She 
would not admit even her cousin without Thorne’s 
leave. He had been promoted to the substantial 
sofa for the last day or so, that had won Dr. Matthews’ 
approbation for its solid strength, Saunders and the 
doctor lifting him on and off between them, or some¬ 
times the servant doing so alone. In a short time Colonel 
Thorne hoped to be allowed to hobble with a crutch. 

“ Of course—delighted to see him,” he said cordially. 
“ We must just finish this game, but he won’t mind 
waiting ? ” 

“ Oh no.” 

John Daish came in rather silently and sat down in 
the shadows beyond the lamp while the hand |was 
played out. Thorne did not see his face until he 
advanced into the circle of the lamp, and then he was 
instantly aware that there was something wrong. 
Between the man’s fine blue eyes there was a deep 
line as if it had been suddenly graven there, and his 
lips had an ugly set that aged and hardened his face. 
Thorne's heart gave a throb of dismay, and a horrible 
premonition seized him that this was the beginning of 
Charley’s tragedy. 


218 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


" Well, Daish,” he said cheerfully. “ Your cousin’s 
duties are never done, you see—she has to amuse me 
when she is not otherwise sick-nursing.” 

“ I’m very glad she can, sir,” said John without 
hesitation. And then he came direct to the point 
that was evidently in his mind. “ I’m very troubled, 
Colonel Thorne—I’ve heard something I don’t like 
about your accident.” 

Lillias was putting the cards together quietly, and 
fitting them into an old-fashioned case embroidered 
with fine beads that had held many packs of cards 
since her grandmother made it. She paused and 
looked at John with surprise, her manner quite col¬ 
lected, but evidently pondering whether she ought to 
go away and leave the two men together. 

Colonel Thorne said nothing, but he made a slight 
motion towards her of dissent, and she sat down 
again and took some work from a side table. 

“ Would you tell me how your accident took place ? ” 
said John Daish, and his compressed lips twitched a 
little as if with pain. 

“ Why, the cob shied badly and I took a toss. I was 
riding carelessly—it was my own fault. But I think 
they’ve been corning him too much, and he was short 
of work.” 

“ What did he shy at ? Excuse me, Colonel, I know 
Sir Henry’s cob well. I’ve ridden him. He’s as 
honest as the day. It would be a big thing that would 
make him forget his manners.” 

“ I suppose he saw something in the bushes,” said 
Colonel Thorne reluctantly. “ But as I tell you, I think 
he was a bit above himself.” 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


219 


“ There was an old woman gathering firewood in 
the spinney, who perhaps you didn’t see,” said John 
slowly, as if the words were as difficult to him as some 
foreign language. “ She confesses that she saw the 
accident, but was too frightened to go and help. 
These people are all fools when they ought to keep 
their heads. Then Lilli as and the girl arrived on the 
scene, and the woman made off home, glad to be out 
of it.” 

“ Why did she hold her tongue till now ? ” said 
Thorne sharply. 

“ Because she thought you were killed. She didn’t 
want to be asked questions. When she heard you 
were getting better she began to talk.” 

“ She had better have held her tongue at this late 
hour. It doesn’t go to her credit that she left me 
there without finding out if I were alive or dead. But 
probably the whole story is a lie. These old women 
love to make out that they have been on the spot, for 
the sake of a gossip.” 

“ I don’t think she was lying—I wish I did,” said 
Daish with a bitterness that seemed unwarrantable. 
“ There is something more. She says that she saw my 
boy Charley with a long pole creeping slowly through 
the spinney, and that he rushed out and deliberately 
startled the horse. The story has gone all round the 
place ”—he muttered an oath—•“ and it reached me 
through my housekeeper.” 

Colonel Thorne drew a breath of relief. If this was 
all, the fat was not yet in the fire. So long as Daish 
said “My boy Charley” he did not know the truth. 
Colonel Thorne’s keen eyes read his discomfited face 


220 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


with characteristic observation, and decided that point 
at once. He was annoyed, hurt, depressed for some 
reason—but he did not know the truth. 

“ Well, Daish,” he said lightly, “ I'm sorry that there 
has been so much talk, but it certainly doesn’t reflect 
on you. As a matter of fact I did see the boy, but I 
was not going to mention it because I didn’t want him 
to get into trouble. You know what boys are, fooling 
about after rabbits or birds, and no doubt the young 
rascal was frightened enough at what he’d done and 
made off pretty quick. Call it an accident and warn 
him that the police might have charged him. He 
won’t do it again ! ” 

“ That’s just what I’m afraid he might , if he doesn’t 
get a sharp lesson,” said John in obvious distress. 
“You don’t know my boy—he seems possessed of a 
devil sometimes ! It’s just as if the life in him went 
to his head like drink and made him do things that— 
that he mustn’t do. As like as not he meant to startle 
the cob and cause an accident if the mood were on 
him.” 

Then Lillias spoke for the first time. Her face had 
gone red and white, and a kind of horror came into it 
at her cousin’s earnestness ; but her heart did not 
entirely govern her head even when it was deeply 
implicated, and she kept her judgment. 

“ Mrs. Skelton is very prejudiced against Charley,” 
she said. “ You must remember that, John. She 
would make the case as bad against him as she could.” 

Thorne gave her one quick grateful glance of admira¬ 
tion. She was keeping her head when he and Daish 
were both in danger of losing theirs. 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


221 


“ Give the boy a chance, anyhow,” he said. “ Ask 
him himself whether he were flourishing a long pole 
to the danger of anyone on horseback. Give him a 
talking to, Daish.” (It was up to Charley to lie, and he 
did not doubt that she would do so. He could do no 
more for her, himself.) 

“ I’m afraid I must give him something more than a 
talking to,” said Daish, rising with a heavy sigh. “ I 
must make the lad understand for his own sake that 
he must not act like a savage. He may have had some 
grudge against you, Colonel, of which you know nothing 
—he takes odd likes and dislikes, and he never forgets 
even a fancied injury. It may be his gipsy blood, but 
whatever it is I’ve got to have it out of him.” 

A sudden deep dismay made Colonel Thorne raise 
himself abruptly on his cushions, staring at John 
Daisies set face and his great frame. An incredible 
fear seized him that the very safeguard of Charley’s 
assumed sex might prove his undoing. 

“ What do you mean ? What are you going to do ? ” 
he said sharply. 

“ I’m going to give my little lad a thrashing,” said 
John Daish with a sob caught in his throat as if the 
very words were bitter. “ I hate laying a finger on 
him—I’ve struck him once before, and I said I never 
would again, unless he forced me. But this is too much, 
if it’s true. He will understand—he must.” 

" Butyou can’t! ”—Colonel Thorne almost stammered 
in his horror. John’s great height and heavy hands 
assumed ominous proportions, and he turned a little 
sick to think of it—a girl—a woman—in that grasp ! 
“ Look here, Daish, for God’s sake don’t do anything 


222 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


when your wool’s up! ” he said with a queer mixture 
of the sublime and ridiculous in his earnestness and his 
slang. “ For my sake—because I ask it'—let the thing 
go, and don’t speak to the boy at all. It won’t mend 

my leg, and I’d rather not be the cause of—of- 

He’s such a slip of a thing! ” he ended helplessly. 
“ You’d half kill him.” 

But he had calculated without the inherent dogged¬ 
ness of Daish’s race when they got an idea into their 
minds. It was evident that the man hated the 
thought of hitting the boy—his little lad !—as he 
said. His eyes were wet with tears, and his voice broke 
when he spoke ; but it did not turn him from his 
purpose for one moment. 

“ He must learn,” he said simply. “ If he owns up 
I must punish him.” 

“ That’s the very way to teach him to lie.” 

“ You don’t know Charley, sir. He never lies— 
to me.” 

A dreadful fear entered Colonel Thorne’s mind that 
perhaps he did not know Charley—that for some fine 
faith in her that he had never reached she would speak 
the truth, and stand to it. And then ? Would she 
bear her punishment-—the pain and the humiliation— 
as well, or confess to her sex and save herself ? She 
might even be mad enough to choose the thrashing; 
and had it been a woman who knew her secret she 
might, understanding women, have let her. But Colonel 
Thorne saw something else, and that was the man’s 
point of view, for he knew that it was impossible for 
him to let Daish do this thing inignorance, and shame 
his manhood. 



THE CRACK OF DOOM 


223 


He turned abruptly to Lilli as, who was still a silent 
listener, her work in her hands but her grave eyes turned 
from one to the other as they spoke. 

“ Lillias, will you shut the door ? ” he said, uncon¬ 
scious that he had used her name, for before John 
he generally spoke of her as “ your cousin ” or “ Miss 
Daish.” 

She rose at once at his bidding and shut the door as 
he wished, returning to her seat by the lamp to look 
and listen. Her beautiful face was in the arc of light, 
whereas the two men were almost in shadow, and she 
had the curious and unstudied effect of a goddess in 
silent judgment. 

“ I’ve something to tell you in my turn, Daish,” said 
Thorne seriously. “ I don’t want to—I’d rather leave 
it to Charley—I don’t want to interfere. But in your 
case I should never forgive the other man if—God ! 
this is hard ! ” he exclaimed in genuine distress, and 
felt the sweat break out on his forehead. “ This 
boy—who is so unlike other boys—did you never 
guess ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” The lines in Daish’s face 
seemed to deepen, his breath sounded hard and thick 
across the room. Lillias laid the useless work down, 
and folded her hands i n her lap, waiting also. 

“ I recognised—Charley—one day in your fields,” 
said Thorne slowly. He did not look at either of the 
cousins now. “ I spoke to . . . her.” 

The one word seemed to fall into the silence like 
thunder. It seemed as if the little unpretentious 
parlour were always to be the scene of a tragedy too 
great for it. John Daish threw his hands up with a 


224 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


cry like some dumb thing in pain, and staggered to his 
feet. 

“ She is Carlotta Edison, the girl who imitates street 
arabs so wonderfully,” said Thorne as if he could not 
get the words out quickly enough. “ She came down 
here for a freak—a chance adventure—after she had 
been laid up and was getting restless with the inactivity 
of her convalescence. She is not to be judged like other 
people—she’s always been a law to herself, and she does 
mad things. I told her she had no right—I told her 
to go back.” 

His clear troubled voice paused. Again there was 
no sound in the room but John’s heavy breathing. 
But he looked like a man who had had a mortal blow, 
so that he rocked on his feet as he stood. 

“ Will you tell us the rest, please ? ” said Lillias 
at last. 

“ There is nothing much to tell.” Ted Thorne 
began to feel that the situation was beyond him, and 
to grow desperate. “ I had known her in London, 
and I knew what she was, how little to be reckoned with. 
I tried to frighten her into a confession or to going 
away—I threatened to tell Daish myself, but I never 
meant to. It was up to her to do that, but she wouldn't. 
She wanted to stay, and—and she’s a woman ! ” He 
flung the words at them as all the explanation left 
to him. “ But she thought I might give it away, I 
suppose, and it drove her mad. She must have con¬ 
cluded that I was going to Leith that morning when she 
rushed out at me in the spinney. Whether she 
planned it all or did it on impulse I don’t know. Prob¬ 
ably it was impulse. Charley has got a heart some- 


THE CRACK OF DOOM 


225 


where, poor little kid. But she doesn’t always know 
what she’s doing.” He spoke with the leniency of his 
own kindness and the tolerance of a man of the world, 
almost as if he apologised for some unfortunate creature 
whose disadvantages were not its fault. He glanced 
at Lillias as if to see if she understood and sympathised, 
but now her eyes were cast down and he could read 
nothing in her composed face. He turned to Daish 
rather helplessly. 

“ I don’t know what Charley would have done if 
you had asked her point blank about the accident,” 
he said. “ If you say she doesn’t lie to you she 
would probably have owned to that without telling you 
who she was. And then, if you had threatened to give 
her a hiding—I don’t know. She is quite capable of 
taking that too ! And, as a man, I couldn’t let another 
man . . . you see ? ” 

He looked at the giant rocking on his feet, the poor 
beautiful face torn by hideous passion, and he sank 
into helpless silence. Here was something he could 
not cope with, that almost awed him. Let Charley 
deal with the havoc she had wrought ! Thorne almost 

ground his teeth to think of her, the little-! 

(he used an ugly word). He wished he could make 
them, these people of another world, understand 
that she was not worth heartbreak, or the trouble that 
she caused. They were too good for her—perhaps 
for him, Ted Thorne, also, as she had said. She had 
plunged her little ruthless hands into the depths of a 
great soul to soil and stain it with ugly experience, 
and she was too slight a thing to cause such tragedy. 

But John Daish was feeling his way across the room 

p 



226 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


like one who is drunk, clutching at the familiar furni¬ 
ture to keep him on his feet, and with never a word of 
farewell or excuse for his departure. As he went he 
sobbed, and they heard him sobbing still-—awfully— 
as he fumbled at the door and reeled down to the gate. 

Quick and emotional also, the scene had been too 
much for Thorne. He put his hands over his eyes 
and brushed away the tears that had gathered there. 
He did not see what Liliias was doing, but a few minutes 
later he found her standing by his side with a glass 
of warm milk, as if nothing had happened. 

“ I have put some whiskey in it,” she said steadily. 
“ It will make you sleep. And Saunders wants to 
know if you will go to bed now ? ” 

Thorne looked up gratefully while she held the glass 
for him as though he had been a baby. 

“ You always do the right thing, Liliias,” he said. 
” How am I going to get on without you ? ” 

“ You will be well then,” said Liliias simply. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE GOING OF THE BOY 

Summer had lingered late, and the September nights 
were warmer than those of June had been. As he 
walked rapidly down the road to Leith Farm the 
soft wind fanned John Daish’s fevered face and lifted 
the thick hair on his forehead, but though he was 
aware of the relief of being out in the open air he was 
not conscious of his surroundings any more than he 
knew' that he had left his cousin’s cottage bareheaded. 
His powerful hands opened and shut as if gripping 
on something, and he lifted his stricken face to the 
smooth starry sky with eyes that held the bewildered 
pain of a child. He had not suffered such a sense of 
loss since that day when his old father had told him 
in a final, matter-of-fact tone that his dreams of 
college were tomfoolery, and he must make up his 
mind to an office stool and getting on in the w r orld of 
commerce. He remembered how he had taken his 
trouble to the quiet fields and the open night, then 
as now, and the surge of impotent anger in his rash, 
boyish veins ; but looking back it seemed to him a farce 
to what he suffered now. For he had not learned to 
hunger then, or to carry an empty heart for years only 
to have it filled for a little to overflowing, and then 

emptied in one short half-hour. 

227 


228 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


There was no one on the deserted road to see him 
go rocking by, his breath gasping and breaking with 
short exclamations now and then to relieve the tension 
of his brain. If there had been, the scandalised neigh¬ 
bours would have said that farmer Daish was tight for 
once, and shamefully full of liquor. And indeed the 
passion in him worked like wine, and made him dizzy, 
thick in utterance, and no longer master of his limbs. 
He clutched at his own gate when he reached it at 
last and nearly shut his dog out, but that Hector 
kept close to his heels with the wistful intuition of his 
kind that something was dreadfully wrong with his 
master and he must not be left. The great mongrel 
followed Daish into the house instead of going to his 
guard at the door as usual, and lay down in the parlour 
with watchful eyes upon that unsettled figure ; but 
John did not even see him. He was waiting for what 
was to come —for the encounter that must occur when 
Charley came to the nightly tryst for his hour’s study. 

There was a small hand-lamp on the mantelshelf, 
burning as he had left it when he went hurriedly out 
from that stormy interview with his housekeeper. 
Mrs. Skelton had gone to bed in tears—so much he 
knew, though he had forgotten what he said to make 
her cry. He had been angry because of the fear in 
his heart—the fear that her words were true, and he 
should have to punish Charley. But it seemed a 
trivial thing to what had actually occurred, and 
Colonel Thorne’s revelation. Why had this thing 
happened to him ? Why had the girl lied and acted 
and fooled him for the caprice of her disordered fancy, 
and insisted on continuing the deception even when 


THE GOING OF THE BOY 


229 


recognised by Thorne ? Horrible suspicions of her 
past life and character made their present intercourse 
a degraded thing in the turmoil of his mind. He would 
rather that she had been the thing she represented 
herself—a waif of the roads and streets'—even if a 
girl, than the favourite of the public, the notorious 
success of the variety stage. He knew her name well 
enough—even in his indifferent detachment from such 
things he could not help hearing of Carlotta Edison— 
but he had never heard the packed house shout 
“ Charley ! ” to her across the footlights, or seen her 
dressed as the gamin that was her forte, until, alas ! 
he had seen it unconsciously at these very doors . . . 

There was a sound in the garden, the rustle of the 
dark roses outside the window, and something climbing 
in. He seized the lamp and held it high as if to guide 
her—really to see plainly for once this cheat who had 
never given so successful an impersonation on the 
stage. The little light figure scrambled over the 
window-seat as usual, and Charley stood in the room, 
the raised lamplight falling on the round black head 
and the healthy tan of her face. Daish did not move 
or speak. He was gazing at her with an incredulity 
that was almost a wild hope for a minute. Her 
appearance was so exactly that of a thin growing lad 
that he could not fasten one vicious attribute of her 
sex upon her. There was no curve of bosom or 
softness of outline, hardly a feminine beauty that 
could be imagined in the wiry figure and active limbs 
under the well-worn jersey and knickerbockers. She 
looked up to see why he stood so silent with the raised 
lamp, and his heart sank. In the great black eyes he 


230 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


saw something that he had never recognised before. 
It was a woman looking out of them, and a woman in 
love. In that brief moment while they stood there 
face to face, with the lamp held high in John’s hands, 
he knew the reason of all his yearning over this supposed 
boyhood—his “ little lad ” that he had deceived him¬ 
self in wanting for his son. His own manhood had 
met and recognised the attraction in her, but his mind 
had seen nothing but what she showed him of disguise. 
And she loved him. He knew that also in the blinding 
pain and stabbing joy of seeing her as she was—the 
pain of her being degraded in his eyes, the joy of mutual 
passion. 

Charley had opened her lips for the usual shy 
greeting, and the words, “ Evening, guv’nor. All safe ? ” 
They were never uttered. Her eyes widened until the 
pupils were distended, and she thrust her head a 
little forward, peering at him. Then it seemed as if 
words were needless, for with a strangled cry she put 
her hands up to her frightened face. 

“ Yes,” said Daish slowly, and with difficulty. “ I 
have seen Colonel Thorne. I forced him to tell me.” 
Even then his large sense of justice made him fair to 
Thorne. The girl should not think that it had been a 
willing betrayal. He put the lamp carefully back on 
the mantelpiece with a movement as if his hands were 
stiff and hardly under his control, and crossing the 
room with one stride he caught her by the shoulder 
even as Thorne himself had done in the meadow. 

“ Tell me,” he said in a curious low voice, " why 
did you do this thing ? What was my life to you that 
you should want to wreck it ? ” He was past pretences 


THE GOING OF THE BOY 


231 


now; he did not take his stand upon the ground 
that she had done an impudent and outrageous thing 
in living as a farm-boy amongst rough men, or her decep¬ 
tion of himself which might seriously implicate him if 
it came to light. All that seemed unimportant compared 
to the deeper wrong she had done him in his personal life. 

“ Tell me ! " he said with ominous gentleness. 

“ I didn’t mean to doit—not at first'— ” she breathed 
the words through her shielding hands. “ I had been 
ih, I was lightheaded still, I think. I wanted to get 
out and go about the markets as usual, like a boy. 
And I got tired and fell asleep in your van because of 
the smell of the lavender—it seemed to draw me. And 
then when you found me in the hay, and showed me 
the lavender fields, I wanted to stay—I couldn’t go 
away again ! ” 

“ Was any of it true—what you told us about 
yourself—or was it all lies ? ” he asked with an ex¬ 
tremity of bitterness that sounded very quiet. 

“ Some of it was true—about the waifs and strays 
of London—but if you’d known anything of rescue 
work you’d have known I wasn’t a bit like them. I’ve 
been with them and talked to them for the sake of 
imitating them, but the public won’t have the real 
thing—no one would stand it ! It was true about the 
* gleaners ’—the nuns who work down East told me 
that—and that part about sleeping on the roofs of sheds 
is in the Barnado Boys’ records. But I’m a stage arab 
—you’d have seen it if you hadn’t been so easy to gull.’' 

In her earnestness she had dropped her hands, 
and looked up at him with a breathless anxiety to 
see how he took it. The habit of slang remained 


232 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


with her—always did, if he could but have known 
it—but her Cockney accent was all gone. He knew 
now why it left her in moments of great excite¬ 
ment or stress of emotion. It had been carefully 
assumed, but it must have been difficult to keep up 
always as she had kept it up through the first weeks 
of her fife on the farm. 

“ Why didn’t you—run away again—while there 
was time ? ” he said, still with that difficult forcing of 
the words. 

Her eyes fell from his, and she trembled all through 
her slight body. ‘‘I did try—but you brought me 
back ! ” she said. 

Daish suddenly loosed his hold of her, and groaned 
as if he had been vitally wounded. He remembered 
how he had beaten her when her inexplicable jealousy 
of Lillias had made her foul-mouthed as a virago, and 
her fury when Mrs. Skelton had struck her in turn for 
coming into this very room. On both occasions she 
had tried to go, and he had brought her back, as she 
said. If it had not been for Colonel Thorne’s inter¬ 
vention he might have thrashed her again ; and a fear 
of his own passion made him feel that there would be 
a savage joy in revenging his primitive manhood upon 
her now. To bruise and stripe her, and then to use 
her for his own wicked pleasure, was a temptation so 
dreadful that it was as if the devil had entered in and were 
urgingit upon him. He could not see her face for the 
rush of blood to his eyes and the thunder of his heart, but 
across the din of his own senses he heard her little voice. 

“ John ! ” she said pleadingly. 

His training came back then, all the traditions of his 


THE GOING OF THE BOY 


233 


life with their nobility of civilisation—that a man’s 
strength is given him to control, that he may not even 
fight his fellow-man unfairly, or be cruel to anything 
weaker. The brute and the bully and the coward of a 
moment since fell from John Daish; for whatever she 
had done she was a woman. . . . 

“ Go now, before this thing is ever found out,” he 
said harshly, shaking with his fear of himself. “ And 
never come into my life again.” 

“Not before you forgive me!” she said desperately. 

“ I shall never forgive you.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“ Because you have stolen something from me that 
you can’t give back—because of the trust you have 
murdered, the delight you have lost me, the love of my 
* little lad ’ who will always be as a dream-child in my 
heart. It is worse than if you had died, for I know' 
now that you have never existed—not as I saw you.” 

" You loved me as Charley—why don’t you love me 
still ? ” she said quickly. “ You do—you do ! It 
was me you loved, not the boy that I acted for you.” 

She came boldly across the room to him, and seized 
his arm with her little hard hands. “ You shall 
forgive me at least,” she said fiercely. “ For I will not 
go without it. Why are you so hard ? We love each 
other, John—I want no man in the world as I do you. 
I can be good for you, and quiet, and like any happy 
ordinary woman who has her man and is satisfied with 
him. Listen ! Listen !—I am only restless and un¬ 
happy and craving for excitement all the time because 
of the want of you, though I never knew what it was 
that I wanted. I can make you happy too—I know I 


234 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


can. You don’t want a girl like your cousin Lillias, 
beautiful and kind though she is; she’s too like you, 
you would bore each other, and drone on together 
without ever being satisfied. I’m not like that—not 
beautiful and not kind—I’m wicked sometimes, and 
I'm never the same two days together. But I’m 
myself. And it’s me that you want.” 

He looked at her as if half fascinated through her 
quick decisive speech, and he saw that it was true. 
She could be good for him—and perhaps for him only. 
In his protection and the shelter of his love she would 
not stray nor need to stray. But he saw her, fatally, 
as the mother of his children and the mistress of his 
house, and he remembered that she might not bring 
him a clean record—that he dared not ask for it. The 
woman he married must be as straight as he was 
himself. It was the Daish tradition. Of anything 
less than marriage he would not think—he had thrust 
that from him once already. 

“ How long is it since you were such friends with 
Thorne ? ” he asked abruptly. It was almost as if he 
struck her with the words. 

“ Why do you ask that—now ? ” 

“ Because I know what you are—I feel it,” he said 
harshly. ” Come ! out with it—he was one of your 
men friends ? ” 

“ It was such a little while—and so long ago,” she 
faltered as if dazed by his rude attack. Then her 
spirit flared up in honest indignation. “ You have no 
right to ask me questions of Ted Thorne or any other 
man ! I have not offered you the past, but the present.” 

He gave a short hard laugh. “ A long time ago ! ” 


THE GOING OF THE BOY 


235 


he said scornfully. “ Why, how old are you ? Nine¬ 
teen ? Twenty ? You cannot be more, to look like a 
boy of fourteen successfully—a boy underfed and 
undeveloped too ! It must have been but a year or so 
since—and there have been others in the interim. 
Dear God ! and you would like to fool me in turn.” 
He swung round on her fiercely. “ Take yourself off, as 
I told you to do. You have your own world—that is all 
right for you, I suppose—but you are not fit for mine.” 

She stood still for a moment looking at him, as if 
she would take in his great figure and the distorted 
beauty of his face. The little lamp burned steadily, 
and its light caught the crisp ripples of his sunny hair 
and the hot colour in his cheeks. His eyes were quite 
blue in their intensity, and his features seemed more 
ruggedly perfect than ever before. A princely man 
in his terrible beauty, rather than a yeoman farmer. 

In the pause the dog Hector rose and walked slowly 
across the room, laying his great jowl on the girl’s arm. 

“ Hector has forgiven me, though he hated me 
once,” she said slowly. “ He wants me to stay ! ” 

“ You saved Hector’s life. You have lost me mine.” 

“ Oh,” she exclaimed with a bitter little cry, “ how 
hard good people are ! ” 

He did not answer. In the very excitement of his 
accusations he had somewhat lost his control of him¬ 
self, and his harshness was the result. For he felt the 
blood flushing his great veins, and he was afraid of 
some impulse of Nature that should land them both 
in a common ruin. He had fought his passion down 
once when it took the form of mere brutality and 
revenge. Now it surged over him in a subtler form, and 


236 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


he shook as if with ague. The house was very still. 
All sounds from the room overhead had ceased, and 
the muffled ticking of clocks was all that broke the 
silence. He was alone with her, unknown to his 
household, and with no one to say him nay if he 
chose to take advantage of the night. For she would 
not refuse, or if she would he was very much the 
stronger It almost seemed as if she owed him this 
poor compensation for all that she had stolen from 
him—the lad who might have been to him as a son, had 
he ever existed, or the woman he might have openly 
loved had she lived within the laws of his rigid ideal. 
He could not respect her, but he loved her none the 
less with an instinct beyond all his traditions. Let 
him take her then, since it was only on the lowest 
plane that they could reach each other. 

Then, through the rushing in his ears as before, he 
heard her voice speaking and sobbing both together. 

“ I’m very young still—I knew evil before I ever 
knew good, and there was no one to tell me; Don’t 
judge me as you might a woman who had had her 
chance. . . . I’m going now, and I shan’t come back. 
. . . When you hear of me, don’t take it for granted 
that it’s something bad. You’ll hear plenty of 
lies. . . The little sobbing voice drifted further 
off, and before he could collect himself she had sprung 
out of the open window again with all Charley’s agility. 

The last whisper came from the odours of the starlit 
garden, like a wail—" I loved you, John !—I would have 
stayed with you. I loved you. . . .” 

Then the cool night wind fluttered through the empty 
room, chilling his human senses as if Death itself had 
touched him in passing. 


CHAPTER XIV 


AT MIDNIGHT 

It was seldom that Lillias Daish could not sleep, but 
the events of the evening had affected her more deeply 
than her composure betrayed. The almost incredible 
deception that Charley had practised at Leith farm 
would have been something to wonder at in itself, but 
its results were further reaching. Lillias had a mind 
that worked slowly, but with mathematical precision. 
She could make none but remorseless deductions from 
known facts, and she had never known the mercy of 
self-deception. Long before John Daish had asked 
himself torturing questions as to Colonel Thorne's 
acquaintance with Carlotta Edison, Lillias had grasped 
and accepted the suggestion of his knowledge of the 
girl—a knowledge that betrayed its intimacy in every 
excuse he made for her character. Lillias was a Daish 
as well as John, and had imbibed the same principles 
as to the difference between good and bad in men and 
women, which included no plea for extenuating circum¬ 
stances. The only difference between her and her 
cousin was that John judged by his mind’s dictation and 
Lillias by her heart’s instinct. People who have never 
cultivated a habit of logical thought at all are usually 
more bigoted and narrow-minded than those who 


238 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


have ; but in this case it was the reverse, perhaps 
because Lillias* nature was as gravely beautiful as her 
face. She thought no more evil than the Madonna lilies 
in her garden ; and in consequence evil had no power to 
distort her mind. 

But the situation required to be thought out and 
readjusted. She had not imagined her hero to be 
perfect, but his faults and follies had lain afar off, with 
a general possibility but no particular application. 
Now she had to face the idea of another woman in 
Thorne’s life, and one whom she had definitely seen. 
It might be one of many—but until laced with the one 
it had been easier to tolerate the many. It might be 
a brief thing and very much of the past—but she was 
none the less aware of the shock of its having existed. 

Lilli as let down her thick, rich-coloured hair and 
slowly brushed it. The rhythmical action soothed her 
and kept time to her thoughts. She was going through 
much the same crisis as John Daish, but without the 
turmoil which in the man resulted in a different con¬ 
clusion. For Lillias knew as well as John that she had 
fallen in love, and that the object was by no means her 
ideal. He was indeed the last hero of whom she would 
have dreamed, and his influence upon her life had for 
the moment confused her quiet acceptance of destiny. 
She had imagined herself loving a man a few years her 
senior, her equal in station, one whose world had been 
practically the same as her own, with mutual interests, 
and with a record as clean and honest as her own, 
despite masculine human nature. Colonel Thorne 
was none of these things, and had her mind ruled her 
as his did John Daish, she would have had to reject all 


AT MIDNIGHT 


239 


idea of Thorne as able to hold a place in her heart. 
But all that Lillias saw was the plain fact that she 
loved him. Far older than herself as he was, having 
lived his life out in surroundings of which she could 
hardly conceive, belonging to what her own family 
still quaintly called “ the gentry ” as distinct from 
themselves, roue perhaps, and certainly not blameless 
with regard to women—still she knew that she loved 
him, and that the record against him could not detract 
from that love at all, though it might sadden it. What 
was the use of saying, “He is this—he is that—there¬ 
fore I do not of course care for him,” when she knew that 
she did ? Lillias was wiser in her simplicity than John 
with his cultivated power of reason. 

She looked in the glass at her face, and sighed. The 
shadow of her hair fell over her broad, low forehead 
and into her contemplative eyes, but she saw that she 
was very fair, and she knew that men were driven mad 
for the moment by her face, and would do any rash 
regretful thing for its sake. But beauty was not every¬ 
thing—could not be, since he had been attracted once 
by a girl with little or none. She knew that Charley 
had no chance against her as far as looks went—mere 
perfection of flesh and blood—but there must be some 
strange charm in her to have appealed to two such 
opposite natures as Thorne’s and John Daish’s. 

“ I am a stupid woman,” thought Lillias with rare 
revolt. “ And she is very clever. Oh, why could not 
God give me brains as well as long hair and a smooth 
skin and large eyes ? ” 

Then the old patience came back to her face, the 
toleration of herself as she was without amelioration or 


240 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


self-flattery. To tolerate ourselves is generally the 
last lesson that we learn in life ; but Lillias had learned 
hers early. She drew the white wrapper round her 
and shivered a little in the cool air blowing in at her 
window, for the wrapper was only muslin—a pretty 
thing made by her own hands with some misgiving that 
it was not very serviceable. “ But then mother liked 
me to have nice things,” she had said in sweet self- 
excuse. “ And it does very well for the summer.” 

The kitchen clock striking downstairs made her start 
with the guilty consciousness that it was midnight, and 
she rose to finish undressing, and put her dreams 
quietly on one side. 

Hark ! what was that ? Gravel or something thrown 
against her window ? “ It must be John come back,” 

she thought hastily. “ I hope nothing has happened 
. . . and he might wake Colonel Thorne.” 

Her room was in the front of the cottage, the same 
as the sitting-room where Thorne still slept, but not 
over it, fortunately. She moved swiitly to the window, 
and looked down into the darkened garden. There, 
below her, almost in the bed of roses that grew nearest 
to the door, was a small dark figure—not the one that 
she looked to see, for she had expected John’s massive 
frame, and his face violently disturbed as she had seen 
it last. For a minute she thought her senses had 
deceived her, and then she recognised Charley, with a 
throb of wild fear at her heart for what might have 
happened at Leith. 

“ Lillias ! ” came an anguished cry beneath her, 
“ Lillias Daish—come down and speak to me, for 
God’s sake ! ” 


AT MIDNIGHT 


241 


“ Hush !—you will wake other people,” said Lillias 
quietly. 41 Stay where you are. I will come down and 
let you in.” 

She did not wait to put on a cloak or coil up her hair. 
With its great mass swinging over her shoulders she 
opened her door softly and crept down the stairs, 
still mindful that Thorne was asleep. Her firm light 
hands drew back the bolt and unlocked the door, and 
she stood aside in the little hall-passage, beckoning her 
strange visitor to come in without further question. 

44 1 must speak to you,” said Charley wildly, her 
cold fingers clasping themselves round the older girl’s 
finely muscular arm. ** You are kind as well as good, 
and you will help me. You promised, that day you 
met me in the village. 1 have not a friend in the world 
to-night, Lillias, unless you will be one to me.” 

44 1 will take you up to my room,” said Lillias gently. 
A sudden rush of pity flooded her heart, driving all 
the pain and bitterness out of it with a warmth she 
did not understand or question. She put her strong 
arm round Charley’s slight shoulders to guide her down 
the passage, and felt her quiver. 44 Come quietly,” 
she said below her breath. 44 for we have an invalid 
here—Colonel Thorne.” 

The younger girl started and almost hung back. 
44 1 had forgotten,” she said. 44 You will hate me. 
I might have killed him ! ” 

Lillias’ lips set themselves hard, but she did not 
flinch. This was no time to look back on what might 
have been, or to accuse Charley of hideous intentions. 
It was her instinct to give help and protection, and 
Charley needed both. In the small things of life Lillias 

Q 


242 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Daish might be slow-witted and almost dull, but 
when something difficult almost to greatness was 
asked of her she had that touch of the sublime that 
does not fail. 

The two girls crept lightly down the passage, almost 
as if they were conspirators ; but as they passed the 
sitting-room door Lillias heard her name called for 
the second time with no less urgency than Charley 
had used. 

“ Lillias—Lillias, come in here—I want you ! ” 

She only paused for one moment to draw Charley 
with her. “We must go in/’ she said decidedly. 
“ Colonel Thorne has heard us.” 

There was a faint light in the sitting-room, as it was 
left at night in case the invalid wanted anything. 
Colonel Thorne had raised himself on his pillows, and 
was looking with quick expectant eyes at the door as 
the two figures entered. “ I heard you talking,” he 
said. “ And Charley call. Light the lamp, Lillias.” 

She did so in silence, her eyes concentrated on what 
she was doing, as usual, and without allowing them to 
stray to those two other faces so much more 
agitated than her own. It was Charley who spoke first, 
without being questioned. 

“ Yes, I’ve left Leith,” she said in a hard, short 
voice. “ I’m not going back. I want Lillias to lend 
me clothes—a skirt—anything that will pass muster.” 

“ You can’t go to-night ! ” exclaimed Thorne in¬ 
voluntarily. “ It is past twelve o'clock. I heard it 
strike.” 

“ I must.” 

“ Don’t be silly,” said Thorne, almost pettishly_ 


AT MIDNIGHT 


243 


somehow Lillias knew that he had said just those words 
many a time before to Charley’s irrational impulses. 
“ How can you get away through the night ? ” 

“ I came through the night, and I’ll leave the same 
way. Don’t worry, Ted. I can always find my way, 
somehow. Old training, I suppose.” 

They seemed to have forgotten Lillias, lighting the 
lamp in silence while they talked. She looked at 
Charley collectedly, measuring her height. The shortest 
skirt in her wardrobe would be too long to be anything 
but absurdly in the way, but there was something—a 
short rain-coat—that would cover up her boyish dis¬ 
guise. That would do. ' She left the room so quietly 
that they hardly noticed, and fetched it, bringing also 
a close velvet hat almost like a bonnet that would not 
be noticeable on her short hair. When she re-entered 
the room they were still talking, oblivious of her. 

“ I don’t want money,” Charley was saying, almost 
rudely in her fierce rejection of his offer. “I’ve always 
had some with me. I’ll take the clothes—I’d sooner 
borrow from Lillias than from you.” 

“ Well, you needn’t put it that way ! ” said Thorne 
with the quick resentment of his temperament. “ I 
would not have betrayed you if Daish had not forced 
me to it.” 

“Oh, it’s all right,” she answered restlessly in her 
pain. “ He told me he had forced you—I didn’t think 
you’d gone back on me.” 

“Did he tell you how ? ” 

“No.” 

“He threatened to thrash you for causing my 
accident.” 


244 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“I wish you had let him! ” she said, throwing up 
her square chin with a reckless movement. “ It would 
not have hurt half so much as what he said to me/* 

Thorne was silent, but by no means through 
agreement. He lay back on his pi lows, his grey hair 
ruffled into short rings in a fashion that would have 
shocked him had he known it, and watched Lillias 
quietly wrapping the raincoat over Charley's dark 
sweater and knickerbockers, and pressing the velvet 
hat down over her round black head to keep it on. 
The transformation made her more pathetic, rather 
than ludicrous, the white face looking out from its dark 
frame, pinched and drawn, and the eyes alight with 
pain. It was obvious that she had really come for 
the clothes, for, her object gained, she turned to the 
door without thanks, save that she still held one of 
Lillias’ hands tight between her own small, hot palms. 
On the threshold she turned and looked back at Thorne, 
Speaking with deep meaning. 

“ I told you once that if I went out of these people’s 
lives you ought to go too,” she said. “You know 
that what I say is true—you and I are not fit to black 
their shoes. I’m not coming back—I’m never going 
to see John Daish again of my own will.” She 
caught her breath, but spoke on steadily. “If you 
have any decent feeling, Ted, it’s up to you to do the 
same. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking that be¬ 
cause you’re a man you’ll be forgiven any more than 
I am. They can’t forgive; they may pity, but they 
can’t forgive ! ” 

She suddenly turned her stricken face to Lillias’ 
breast and hid it there, shaking with sobs. For a 


AT MIDNIGHT 


245 


minute the older girl held her quietly in her strong 
arms ; then she led her out of the room. There was 
a short pause and a murmur of voices at the cottage 
door, and then light feet hurrying down to the gate 
through which John Daish had stumbled a few hours 
before. 

“ I asked her to stay until daylight at least—I 
promised to let her go in the dawn, but she would not 
hear reason. It was impossible to keep her,” said 
Lillias as she re-entered the room. “Shall I put out 
the lamp again ? Can you sleep ? I am sorry we 
disturbed you.” 

“ Reason ! when did she ever hear reason ? ” said 
Thorne, disregarding her matter-of-fact suggestions. 
“ I believe she really has gipsy blood in her veins— 
what her origin is Heaven knows ! Banister, the great 
Variety Show man, discovered her in a charitable home 
when she was sixteen, and had her trained. She 
was a waif and stray when she was brought to the home. 
That’s all I know of her.” He glanced half anxiously 
at Lillias standing with her hand on the lamp. “ You 
want to get rid of me, and go to bed, don’t you, dear ? ” 
he said gently. 

“When you are ready.” 

“I shan’t sleep—after all these scenes—and what 
she said-” 

“Let me give you some aspirin.” 

“ Oh, damn the aspirin ! ” said Thorne furiously, 
looking at her unconscious face as she stood in her 
soft muslin with the flood of her splendid hair falling 
round her. She had entirely forgotten that she was 
without her gown and that she had let her hair down. 



246 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


though almost any other woman would have remem¬ 
bered it with one small flaw of satisfaction in her most 
secret consciousness. All her kind troubled heart was 
engrossed with Charley for the minute—Charley going 
out across the fields at night with her stricken face, 
and the poor, passionate heart that John had wounded 
with his rigid principles and his admirable ideals ! 
She had shown no trace of softness until the moment 
when she hid her face on Lilli as’ bosom ; yet the older 
girl knew that, ill-regulated and impossible as she 
was, the tragedy of that parting with John Daish had 
been a real force in her life that might make or mar it 
for ever. 

“ Lillias, come here ! ” 

She had so put her own affairs on one side that she 
started when Thorne’s voice recalled her to herself, 
and came slowly across the room to him—too slowly 
for his impatience. He stretched out his hand and 
caught her wrist, almost dragging her to the bedside. 

“ Did you hear what Charley said to me ? ” he said. 
" Do you want me to go out of your life ? ” He caught 
a great strand of her golden hair and twisted it round 
his nervous fingers so that it gleamed and burned in 
the lamplight. “ Would you marry me if I asked you, 
Lillias ? ” he said, and his voice was far more wooing 
than the bald question. 

The tears welled up slowly in her eyes, so that they 
looked dark and colourless. Yet he thought involun¬ 
tarily of the lavender fields after a shower of rain. 

“ You don’t want to ask me,” she said simply. 

“ Perhaps I don’t, but I can’t help myself,” he 
retorted. He spoke on the impulse of the moment. 


AT MIDNIGHT 


247 


Unfortunately she saw a more ominous meaning in it 
for that very reason. Just as there is truth in wine 
there is truth in the sentence that catches us unawares. 

“ Don’t ask me only because I’m pretty,” she said 
earnestly. " We’ve gone through a lot to-night, and 
you’re not yourself—you would be sorry to-morrow. 
I shouldn’t like that.” 

Yes, on the morrow he would have pause to remember 
her situation in life, her upbringing, her surroundings, 
her relations. For there was a picture in her mind of 
which he knew nothing—a picture of a stout woman in 
an aggressive violet coat and skirt, whose flushed face 
and common voice had jarred even her placidity in 
this very room. Once more the poison of Mrs. Jen¬ 
nings* presence was in Lillias* nostrils—the "bad 
smell ** of evil, as the sick lady of the vicarage had called 
it in a never-forgotten phrase. There was no need 
to tell Colonel Thorne of all this—it was only a ques¬ 
tion of renouncement and then to keep silence. 

But her hesitation had the result of increasing his 
ardour, without design on her part. "I suppose this 
really means that you can*t forgive me,” he said with 
the disappointment of a spoilt child. "You are like 
John, as Charley said—you want all your world to be 
saints.* * 

" Oh no—I suppose you are only just like a man,** 
said Lillias. There is no weakness for which that excuse 
is not valid, in the feminine mind. "I’d rather not 
talk about it; please don’t ask me anything more, for 
your own sake.” She spoke quite calmly, and his 
hand loosened on hers with a sense of blank discourage¬ 
ment ; but at the same moment a great tear fell 


248 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


glistening on the tress of hair that was slipping through 
his fingers, making them both start. 

“ Tears, Lillias ? ” he said, and laid his face against 
her breast even as Charley had done, with a revelation 
that here was rest and peace for a man’s head, a calm, 
deep nature to soothe troubled nerves, a love that would 
be faithful however it might be repaid. 

“I am not going to repent,” he said gravely, ‘'if 
you do not. I know my own needs-—just you, 
Lillias, and your womanhood. It’s a bad bargain for 
you, darling, but somehow I don’t think you mind.” 

She did not answer in words, but she stood there 
holding him as if she never wished to let him go, and 
the silent clasp reassured him that he had at last done 
wisely and well for himself. The breath of evil passed, 
and Cousin Sarah Anne Jennings became the secondary 
consideration that she really was in the deep moment 
of those two lives. Little annoyances and even small 
humiliations there must be, perhaps, as there are for 
all those who venture matrimony; but if he did not 
mean to repent, Lillias knew in her inner conscious¬ 
ness that she could interpose her own strong, deep 
nature successfully between him, with his quicker 
feelings, and the drawbacks of her origin. The tears 
had dried in her happy eyes, and if the angels ever glow 

with human warmth they may look as Lillias looked 
then. 


CHAPTER XV 


"lavender’s blue ! ” 

At the end of July London has a peculiar smell which 
seems to issue forth from the doors of public-houses, 
and the back premises of small greengrocers’ shops 
where the vegetables have grown stale. Add to this 
the clothes of the great population that cannot leave 
town, and the odour emanating from these and the 
weary bodies inside them, and it is small wonder that 
the streets seem depleted of ozone and never to have 
been watered and aired for ages. 

Even in the comfortable modern flats of the region 
bordering upon Regent’s Park the wide windows seemed 
to admit a stale air that was hopelessly tainted before 
it reached the well-kept rooms, and yet this part of 
London stands higher and more healthily than the 
rest of Belgravia and Mayfair. 

“ All our best people are out of town, or will be after 
Goodwood,” said the porter of Portland Chambers to 
the pretty maid at No. 20. “ Your lady wouM go too if 

it weren’t for ‘full houses,’ eh ? ” He winked at the 
g rl, but whether from some sense of knowingness 
in the reference, or whether from more personal motives, 
it would be unwi e to say. 

“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Cubitt,” said the girl 

249 


250 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


pertly. " We could go if we liked, I suppose, consider¬ 
ing that the ‘full houses ’ depend pretty much on us." 

"But then she's under contract," expostulated 
the porter. 

"Contract!" said the maid scornfully. “Con¬ 
tracts don't hold her, if the mood’s on her to cut it. 
She was under contract last year as soon as she should 
be able to stand up after 'flu, and no sooner could she 
do that than she gives us all the slip and leaves Banister 
to whistle for her ! My, there was a shindy! And 
she never came back till September, neither." 

"I heard something was wrong. Who was the 
gentleman, Miss Patty ? " 

"That’s what everybody asks, and in my opinion 
they’re all wrong," said the lady’s maid sharply. 
" There wasn’t a man in it. It was just one of her mad 
freaks to rough up old Banister and show us she’d do 
as she liked. I believe she’s touched, sometimes." 

" I shouldn’t like to tell her so ! " said the porter 
with a short laugh. "She looks as if she could skin 
you alive, when her wool’s up." 

" My ! no one dares say a word to her. I don’t go 
near her myself till eleven, and then like as not it’s 
all wrong. One day she’ll be up at five, and leaning 
out of the window looking at the sunrise and crying, 
and the next she won’t have her coffee till it ought to 
be her lunch ! I’d better see about it now, anyway. 
Have those flowers come ? That’s what I came down 
about." 

It seemed more probable that she had come down for 
a gossip while waiting to take up her capricious mis¬ 
tress’s breakfast; but the porter assured her that the 


“LAVENDER’S BLUE!” 


251 


florist had only just sent the usual order, or he would 
have brought it up, and handed her a heavy sheaf 
wrapped up in white paper that smelt fragrantly even 
through the wrappings. 

“ So many of the flats are shut up that Goodman's 
may have forgotten a single order, and sent it along 
a bit late,” he said apologetically. 

“They'll catch it proper if they don't send her 
flowers,” said Miss Patty with a shrug of her shoul¬ 
ders. “They are the one thing she will have—fresh 
every day too. She’s cracked on flowers. Our bill 
at Goodman’s must be a perisher ! ” and with a nod to 
the porter she ran back to the lift and was taken up to 
the third floor with the flowers, where the housemaid 
let her in. 

“Look slippy, Patty!” she said breathlessly. 
“ She's just rung. Cook’s got the tray ready—•— ” 

It was a large flat, considering that it was only asked 
to accommodate one lady and her four maids. The 
long passages were thickly carpeted and the rooms very 
well furnished, though there was something rather 
heterogeneous in the furniture, as if it had been chosen 
to suit many a passing caprice. As Patty knocked dis¬ 
creetly at her mistress’s bedroom door and entered with 
the tray, she was faced with a great four-post bedstead 
supported by gilt dragons that grinned at her fiendishly, 
and which was covered by a wonderful bedspread from 
the silk bazaars of Bombay ; but on the other hand the 
rest of the furniture was so plain and simple as to be 
almost austere, and the round hip bath and huge sponges 
suggested a man's cold douche rather than a woman's 
warm bath and scented 'soap. 



252 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


Under the shaded splendour of the bedspread—gold 
flushing into cerise, and emerald green borders, as 
only the native silk mills of Bombay can produce— 
lay a slight figure that suggested nothing sensuous. 
The round black head on the pillow was cropped like 
a boy's, and the clenched hand half buried in the flaring 
silk was thin and hard rather than delicate and 
womanly. 

‘‘Did you have a better night, miss ? " said Patty 
with a rather deprecating sympathy. 

“No—vile,” was the short reply. “I only slept 
for two hours. It's the heat—or the smells. I think 
London is a sewer. And yet—it is so fresh only a few 
miles off!" 

“ You ought to motor out of town for the day, miss 
—down into Kent or Surrey," began Patty—when she 
broke off in sheer fright. 

Miss Carlotta Edison had suddenly sat up in bed 
and was looking at her with dull hot eyes that seemed 
to hold a frenzy of pain or longing. “ Put that tray 
down, and don’t bother me with your damned advice !" 
she said fiercely—so fiercely that the maid began to 
whimper through surprise and the unexpectedness of 
the attack. 

“I’m sure I'm very sorry, miss," she said feebly. 
“It was only seeing you so worn and really done up 
with the heat and work. I'm sure I never meant to— 
no, I never did ! " 

Her mistress dropped back on the pillows, the sudden 
heat of anger dying out of her face. “ I don't suppose 
you meant anything," she said in the flat tone of utter 
weariness. “There—put those flowers where I can 


“ LAVENDER’S BLUE!” 


253 


see them, and then go away and don't come back till 
I ring. I'm going out as soon as I've had my break¬ 
fast.” 

It was a farce at breakfast, just as it had been a farce 
at sleeping. Carlotta crumbled the toast and flung 
the food about fiercely—dainty food that the cook had 
prepared with greater care ’than she would have used 
for a less exacting mistress. Sometimes it was im¬ 
possible to please Miss Edison, who would send dish 
after dish away untasted, particularly of late. 

“ She's ruining her 'ealth with late hours and 'ot 
suppers, and swearing at 'olesome food ! " said the staff, 
who would have marvelled the more if they had known 
that the lady who could not eat herrings' roes on toast, 
or cream of chicken, longed feverishly for a round of 
home-made bread and a slice of home-cured bacon on 
it, eaten in the dewy morning in the open air; who 
thought of a rough bed of hay in a stable loft while she 
tossed under her fine scented sheets and gorgeous 
silk coverlet. . . . 

Miss Patty had a trying time dressing her mistress 
to go out that day. Carlotta was in a sullen temper 
and ominously quiet. Her small white face was drawn 
and weary, though not so thin and pinched with 
illness as the face of a ragged boy who had journeyed 
down to Leith farm in a lavender van just one year ago. 
It was lavender time again, even in London ; as Miss 
Edison entered one of the great shops in Regent Street 
her eye was caught by a pile of extravagant looking 
little bags tied up with coloured ribbon and labelled 
“Fresh lavender,” three and sixpence. Her ominous 
brows gathered above the black eyes, and she pushed so 


254 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


roughly past the counter where they lay that she 
knocked one to the ground. For a minute she hesitated 
as if she were about to stoop and pick it up. Then 
with a shiver she drew back and passed on, leaving a 
shopman to replace it. 

Out again, in the sick glare of the street, the flaccid 
sunshine and the stuffy smell of humanity. Every¬ 
thing looked a little faded and past its first freshness, 
even the faces and gowns of passers-by, as if the season 
itself were jaded. Well, thank God, after Goodwood 
town would be empty, and the star-turn of the 
Palace no longer the public’s Charley—Charley of the 
Halls—Charley the London arab impersonator. Miss 
Edison was bound to show herself at Gocdwood and 
at Cowes ; but she would take a holiday in the Isle 
of Wight, though it was the sort of holiday where one 
lived on a rich American’s yacht and wore high-heeled 
shoes and played bridge till the small hours, a change 
of dissipation rather than a rest. 

“ Curse everything ! ” said Charley to herself as she 
saw her varied, excitable life stretching before her ; and 
the malediction fell back on her own heart like a 
reproach. 

Her motor-brougham was standing at the kerb. 
She suddenly dismissed it, for no reason save that her 
feet ached to walk off her restlessness, and turning 
towards Portland Place she hurried aimlessly past the 
Queens Hall and the Langham, turning to the left to 
get out of the broader thoroughfare. She was walking 
towards her own flat unconsciously, when in one of the 
quieter streets an old raucous voice struck on her ear 
and brought her to a quivering standstill. 


" LAVENDER'S BLUE ! 71 


255 



Won’t yer buoy my sweet bloom-in’ 



la ven - der 


By the edge of the pavement stood a poorly clad 
woman with a basket of faded lavender—just such a 
type as she had imitated so successfully in John Daish’s 
stables at Leith, for the benefit of the farm hands. 
The woman looked ill, as if suffering from some disease, 
but few of the passers-by gave her even a glance of 
pity, and no one stopped to buy the skimpy sprays 
of dead lavender that were all she had to sell. Charley's 
pause, of course, attracted her attention, and she held 
out the bunches with a shaking hand and renewed 
eagerness. 

“ Do buoy, laidy ! I ain’t sold a bunch ter-daiy— 
'pon my soul I ain’t ! No one seems ter care for the 
lavender as they used—do buoy ! ” 

Two great tears started to Charley's hot, miserable 
eyes, and the relief of them was as gentle rain to a 
parching land. Her hands shook as she opened her 
gold chain purse and turned the loose silver there into 
the basket. 

“I'll do better than buy," she said impulsively. 
“ I’ll sell every bunch for you. Let me stand by you at 
the kerb—here ! " 

The woman looked bewildered. She would rather 
have taken the unexpected money and gone away to 
spend it, perhaps in gin, poor soul. But the stream of 
blessings on her lips was checked by the curious, 


















256 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


beautifully-dressed girl who turned and stood at her 
side, facing the passers-by. Then Charley began to 
sing. Her voice was strong and sweet with the power 
and freshness of her youth and the training of her 
profession. She sang exactly what the woman had 
sung, but had hardly reached the second line before 
there were three or four people stopping to listen to 
her, and then a few more, and the inevitable recogni¬ 
tion. 


"0 % <> . "V 

J-|y- 

—fs —r -— 3 . ~v 


J ■ > a 

r> v N 

4- i . l. N m 

0 0 a f 

c 1 N ' m 


- - — 

W 9 

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Won't yer buoy ray sweet bloom-in’ la-ven-der? Sixteen full 



branch - es a pen - nay l 


“Why, it's Carlotta Edison, the girl at the 
Palace !—It's Charley Edison, the music-hall im¬ 
personator ! ” 

She heard the whisper and felt the curious 
glances at her in her smart clothes, but she never 
faltered. 



You’ll buoy it once— you’ll buoy it twoice : ’Twill make yer 



clo’s small ve - ry noice! 




















































“LAVENDER’S BLUE! 


257 


7 9 


rang the sweet penetrating voice that could “ carry ” 
right across the big halls. She stood up, straight and 
slim as any boy, her white face and black eyes looking 
over the crowd with the practised indifference of her 
profession. Facing an audience v/as second nature to 
Carlotta Edison. 


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It makes a scent for pock-et - hand - ker-chers: Sixteen full 



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branch - es 


pen - nay 


1_ 



Buoy my la - ven - der 


She half threw out her gloved hands with a gesture 
of traffic as the last pathetic notes dragged on the 
exhausted air. The crowd had gathered and gathered 
until it filled the breadth of the pavement, and a 
leisurely policeman came round a corner, shouldering 
his way through the outside stragglers to see what 
caused the congestion. “It's Charley Edison—little 
Charley Edison—singing for that poor woman., to 
help her ! ” The whisper went from mouth to mouth 
again, and of course silver and even notes began to fall 
into the lavender seller’s basket. People were rather 
proud to have recognised the Palace star, liked looking at 
her nearer, had their sentiment touched by the generous 
impulse of the girl who sang for hundreds of pounds a 

1? 









































THE LAVENDER LAD 


258 

week at the Variety shows, and sang now for nothing 
to benefit the draggled, uninteresting woman with the 
lavender basket. There was a hurried explanation 
being given to the constable, who was hindered in 
his duty of dispersing the crowd by a public 
protest. 

Charley looked round her improvised theatre, took 
the temper of her audience by intuitive genius, and 
changed the tune. 




La-ven-der’s blue, did-die did-dle, La-ven-der’s 



iV- ■■ ! - ■ j - ■ ■ - 



1 1 >s-1/ 

'»• _ J* ~\ ^_ J 


s*l 






























































































“LAVENDER’S BLUE!” 


259 



Queen! La-ven-der’s blue, did-dle did-dle, La-ven-der’s 



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green ; If I were a King, diddle diddle, You should be 

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26 o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


A tall man coming down the quiet, street paused 
as others had done, and making use of his unusual 
stature looked over the heads of the crowd to see what 
caused it. There was something a little out of keeping 
with the London streets in his face and figure, though he 
was dressed in an ordinary morning suit of blue serge, 
well cut enough, and wore a soft hat like so many men 
in the heat of the waning season. Perhaps it was the 
marked beauty of the face under the soft hat that made 
him a little startling, so that one or two people who 
glanced at him as he came along looked again, distracted 
even from the novel entertainment at the kerb. His 
face had a certain tragedy in it too, for all its hand¬ 
some lines, and it was so worn that the features looked 
a trifle rugged. His dark blue eyes rested for a moment 
on the face of the girl who was singing without any 
recognition but a certain amused contempt, as if he 
found the apparent charity of the incident nothing but 
an advertisement after all. Then he walked steadily 
onward, going towards Oxford Circus, followed by the 
unfaltering notes of that arresting voice ; 


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“V- . V, 



V, > S v 

—i —i ~ 

I: ~ u ! r ~ 



v„ ' _ Jt ** 


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If I were a King, diddle diddle, You should be Queen ! 

r> u .. . J 

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as za S; 

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“LAVENDER’S BLUE!” 


261 


Charley did not grow any whiter, or faint, or lose her 
self-possession. But her little face was twisted for 
a moment as if with mute agony. She had seen John 
Daish again, in a public street in London, and he had 
passed her without a word, without any sign of recogni¬ 
tion, almost without lingering. No doubt her some¬ 
what dramatic way of assisting the lavender woman 
had been denounced by his grim judgment as merely 
the desire to attract attention to herself. She guessed 
his mental attitude with a blank feeling of despair, 
the while her heart dropped down from its mad leap 
at the sight of him, fluttered, and was still. She was 
thankful that the policeman’s patience was exhausted, 
and that he was dispersing the crowd; thankful that 
for the minute she need sing no more and act no more, 
for she could have done neither. Her lips trembled a 
little as she tried to smile at her protege, and helped 
her to gather up her almost miraculous harvest and 
hide the money in a worn bag hidden beneath her 
gown. Then she went slowly homewards, vaguely 
aware that people were still looking at her, some even 
following her under a pretence of going the same way. 
Her feet seemed heavy and her head light. She was 
conscious of nothing but the shock of seeing John’s 
face, suddenly, across the crowd, and his cruel eyes. 

“I never thought I should see him again,” she told 
herself fiercely, with clenched hands. “And now that 
I have done so it is worse than it was before. He 
would thrust me into hell with just that face'—he has 
thrust me there, with his damned creed and his law of 
what women and men ought to be. There is no mercy 
for such as I am, and no pity. Just as well go to hell, 


262 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


and fulfil my destiny.” She laughed, rocking to and 
for with her hands pressed on her breast as she had 
done the night that Ted Thorne had recognised her 
in the Leith pastures, and she had confessed her love 
for Daish. 

Just a year since she had first gone to the lavender 
farm—ten months or less since she had seen him. 
Time enough in which to grow wise and to wear off 
the poignancy of her passion and its hurt. Yet the 
luxurious room in the expensive flat echoed to a cry 
as bitter as had broken from her in the parlour at 
Leith, the night that they had parted : 

“ Oh, John! John! John !—and I loved you ! . . 

• • • • • • 

It was lavender harvest down in Surrey. Over 
the heavenly blue and the heat haze and the scent that 
rose like incense hung a crowd of insects, intoxicated 
with the summer’s happiness. But John Daish of 
Leith worked at the reaping with a savage sense of 
relief, and as his keen sickle ran through the stiff stalks 
he saw the flowers fall as if he were sacrificing a memory 
with them. 


dr 










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Lavender’s blue, diddle diddle, Lavender’s green; 

E=S=S=j=S=±=rl=i:S-gzl— 




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"LAVENDER’S BLUE! ^ 


263 


The foolish old nursery song I 



The whicker of the wicked sickles went down the rows 
implacably and the poor purple heads fell like fallen 
hopes. There was nobody fit to crown into queenship 
in John Daish’s heart. 



















































CHAPTER XVI 




PEACE 

Twelve months to the heart of Nature means resurrec¬ 
tion, though to that of man it may mean a deeper 
death. The lavender was in full flower once more at 
Leith, despite the shorn clumps of last year. Sweeps 
of clear purple from the old potato patch up to the 
top of the gentle rise, it clothed John Daish’s land 
with the glory of its rich colour, a little lighter where 
the wind swept over it and passed on full of the prodigal 
fragrance. The bees and the butterflies hung in clouds 
of murmuring life above the rich bloom, drowsy with 
sweets, glad with summer, and happy in their work, 
for the harvest was a good one. 

It was still too early for distilling, but the men were 
“ bunching ” for Covent Garden, and the work was 
more complicated than the reaping of the fully ripe 
plants. They worked in one row—first the cutter, 
using his toothed sickle in rhythmical monotony; 
behind him the buncher, who with a practised move¬ 
ment made the cut stalks even against his thigh; and 
behind him again the tyer with a long truss of raffia 
hanging out of his pocket wherewith to tie the bunches. 
Yet other men were employed to carry the lavend r 
on to the headland at the end of the field, where it was 

264 


1 


PEACE 


265 


“half-dozened,” or put into bundles of half a dozen 
bunches for sale in Covent Garden. The bunches were 
stowed in the van and all covered over with the 
archangel mats beneath which Charley had hidden 
herself on the return journey. 

Bunching was a more popular employment than the 
real harvest, because it gave plenty of opportunity 
for talking. Bill Somers was tying the lavender that 
Jonah Wickham bunched, and the two could gossip 
as they pleased, secure in the fact that old Adam, who 
was their cutter, was too deaf to hear. 

“ I reckon we shall be cutting for the oil the week 
after next,” said Somers, looking critically at the 
lavender in his hands. “The distillery won’t be at 
work till August first week this year—maybe second.” 

“It orter be the last week in July,” objected Jonah, 
tying his bunch with neater skill than might have been 
expected from his blunt fingers. But it was knack that 
made a good lavender man in all branches of the work. 

“Don’t you think it, mate. We haven't been as 
early as that for two seasons. Why, the last time we 
distilled at the end of July was that year the dog nearly 
got into the copper. I know it by that. Lord! 
Jack Turner and Jim was heaving out the waste, and 
they say it was the nearest shave they ever see ! ” 

“ The year that Charley was here, then. Ever hear 
any more of un ? ” With a curious impulse Jonah 
lowered his voice, and glanced over his shoulder where 
the tall figure of the farmer was visible at the further 
end of the row. John Daish was the best and most 
expert cutter on his own farm, and the quickest buncher 
andtyeras well. To-day, as it happened, he was cutting. 


266 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


“No—nor anyone else,” said Bill shortly in reply. 
“He run off again just as I always say he would. 
There’s no training those tramp boys to any decent 
work. Not all the spoilin’ and pettin’ he got would 
keep him, and Mrs. Skelton will have it he took more 
than he brought, though there was never a question 
asked.” 

“Mrs. Skelton liked him as well as Hector does a 
stranger!” said Jonah with a sly laugh. “Mrs. 
Skeleton , as he used to call ’er. My ! he was a cure. 
Take her off to the life, he cud.” 

“It’s two years since ’e ’opped it come September,” 
said Somers, as he bunched the lavender. “And 
Somebody’s never bin the same since. You notice 
that, Jonah ? ’* 

“You go to blazes! That weren’t the boy—that 
was his cousin’s marriage with the London gentleman 
•—Colonel Thorne.” 

“Some’ats changed the master’s temper, any’ow. 
And if he wanted the young woman, why didn’t he 
take her while he cud ? ” 

“Maybe she wouldn’t ’ave*’im,” said Jonah cynic¬ 
ally. “If a woman says ‘No ’ to a man, it’s little 
use putting the banns up.” 

The gossip suddenly altered to a closer attention to 
work, for John Daish was coming down the line to say 
something to David Abel. He carried himself, if 
anything, a little more firmly than he had done two 
years ago, and his face was no less handsome, if it had 
altered in some subtle fashion that Bill Somers called 
“temper,” without meaning that the farmer was less 
just or more prone to anger than of yore. It was only 


PEACE 


267 


that he was of darker moods, more morose in his 
habits, less sociable even than of old, and he had never 
been a convivial type or fond of the society of his 
neighbours. 

Yet in the past two years John Daish had prospered. 
The harvests, particularly the peppermint, had been 
rich, and despite the cost of building he was making 
certain alterations and improvements in his house that 
he had long had in mind. The men were of opinion 
that he meant to marry, if only out of pique for his 
cousin’s jilting him after a match between them had 
been considered inevitable, some day. The only diffi¬ 
culty was that the lady was still to find, Daish having 
shown no preference at all for anybody in the neighbour¬ 
hood and paying no suspicious visits elsewhere. He 
rarely went away, except on business. He stuck to 
his work with a steady persistence that at least justified 
him by results, and all the improvements in Leith 
farmhouse were of a bachelor kind—a new bathroom 
with hot and cold water laid on from the kitchen, a 
study for his experiments in the mixing of soils and 
fertilisers that seemed to his men little short of 
necromancy, a harness-room in place of the old 
shed that was considered good enough in his father’s 
day. 

The workmen had been all about the place since 
spring, but they were gone now and the new buildings 
were beginning to work themselves into the familiar 
picture of Leith in the men’s minds. There had been 
no new sitting-room added to the house, such as a 
mistress of it might have looked for, no conservatory 
or greenhouse put up for such idle things as flowers, 


268 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


no new glass porch to the heavy front door, which 
ludicrous addition to old masonry was invariably the 
signal of a bachelor farmer getting married. And Mrs. 
Skelton still reigned supreme in the kitchen, and 
did not feel her empire tottering, so long as she kept 
a certain past prejudice and dark suspicion behind 
locked lips. 

When the familiar, primitive “gong ” rang for the 
dinner hour, Daish lingered a little behind the men, as 
if to see them off the field. But there was a sugges¬ 
tion of aloofness about him when he followed them a 
few yards behind that made Somers nudge his neigh¬ 
bour significantly. As the farmer crossed the road to 
the farmhouse he met the postman, who handed him 
the one letter that he had to deliver. 

“ Morning, Master Daish,” he said cheerfully, as 
he wheeled his bicycle round. “Grand weather for 
your crops.” 

“ Yes, if we do not get rain,” said Daish unemotion¬ 
ally. “ Is this all ? ” 

“All for Leith. Good-day, sir.” 

The man rode away, leaving Daish with the letter 
In his hand in unusual feminine writing. It was from 
Lillias, and he carried it with him into the house, where 
he went almost reluctantly to the old panelled room 
where his midday meal was laid. The parlour had 
become a haunted place, though he never said so even 
to his own heart—haunted with a white face and a 
wailing voice that spoke to him out of the shadows, 
whether it were night or day. 

“ I'm very young still,” it said. “ I knew evil before 
I ever knew good, and there was no one to tell me. . . « 


PEACE 


269 


Pm going now, and I shan’t come back. ... I loved 
you, John !—I would have stayed with you. I loved 
you. . . .” 

Then it was that John Daish was driven to his 
studies of soils and fertilisers, and worked remorselessly 
for the sake of working, writing the record of such work 
in every line round his tragic blue eyes. He winced 
from the sight of the table where they two had stealthily 
worked evening after evening, of the low recess by the 
fireplace where the small boyish figure had sometimes 
been hidden (in his worst moments he would turn his 
head sharply, almost expecting it to creep out), and 
most of all from the lavender picture that he had 
offered as a bribe to study, and that she had told him 
with so much sad meaning would never be hers ! 
The little dazzling sketch with its atmosphere and 
colour was the most intolerable thing in the room. He 
could not bear to look at it—but it drew his eyes the 
moment he entered the parlour. Small wonder that 
he preferred his new study! 

Two years since Charley went away—and only once 
had the vivid memory of her flashed into the sharp 
agony of actual encounter. He had gone to London 
on business just a year ago, and by some freak of fate 
had been obliged to make a diversion to the West End 
to see a man whom he had missed in the City. Then, 
in a quiet side street, he had come upon a crowd of 
people listening to a well-dressed girl singing at the 
kerb by the side of a legitimate street hawker. The 
shock of the recognition was with him still—the sound 
of the clear trained voice singing a rhyme of lavender— 
the old foolish nursery song !— 


270 


THE LAVENDER LAD 




-y , P-\ 

W 0 0 0 0 V 

A P w - - - M V x 9 


f-n t- p 1 . 0 1, 

^ *> j ~r * ua 

- 0—1 0 - 0 - i/—1 

^ A jt =* 


Queen ! La-ven-der‘s blue, did-dle did-dle* La.-ven-der’s 





















































































































































PEACE 


271 



green; 


SriS 


1 ^ 








jttZ*~0Z3t. 




If I were a King, diddle diddle. You should be 





2s=t 




0 

S* 



5=3= 

y-!»-- 



He had turned from the whole scene with such hard 
contempt in his heart that for the minute it had been 
no more than a sorry exhibition to him—the stage 
favourite, advertising herself even in the London 
streets, under the guise of charity. No doubt she 
loved the dramatic moment and the crowd of people 
staring at her, since modesty or shame were unknown 
qualities to Miss Carlotta Edison. But sometimes 
since, a little gentle doubt had laid a timid hand upon 
the ugly memory—had tried to remind him of Charley’s 
impulses and ungoverned nature, generous even to 














































































































272 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


extravagance. Might she not have done it out of 
kindness rather than self-advertisement ? Would he 
have judged so harshly save for his own bitterness 
and resentment ? “When you hear of me,” said the 
wailing voice out of the shadows, “don’t take it for 
granted that it’s something bad. Yoa’ll hear plenty 

of lies-” Perhaps the lies had been of his own 

creating. But he drove the gentler thought away, 
and hugged his vindictiveness as though it were a 
virtue. 

Save for that encounter he had never seen or heard 
of her since—he had never sought to hear. Her name 
must have been often enough in the papers, but he 
had steadily kept off such news, and she might have 
married or died for all he knew. He had shut his heart 
with the shutting of his doors that night when she 
went away, and would not listen to its bitter cry. 
But he had not succeeded in killing the love that he 
kept down by sheer will power, or in easing the pain 
of its denial. It surged up sometimes, and threatened 
to overwhelm him. Then it was that he kept most by 
himself, and his men said that his “temper had 
changed.” It was not often, for he was a busy man 
and never gave himself leave to think or to soften; 
but he dreaded those wild hours of bruised passion as 
he dreaded nothing else. It was a merciful thing that 
no one at least had suspected the girl’s sex, unless it 
were the intuition of his housekeeper, who could prove 
nothing. Even hor hatred could not unmask the 
deception, which was known only to three people— 
John Daish himself, Lillias, and Colonel Thorne. Most 
people put down the alteration in John to Liilias' 



PEACE 


273 


marriage, as Jonah Wickham had done, and wanted 
no further explanation. He let it go at that, indif¬ 
ferent to their comments or pity, and was thankful. 

Lillias’ letter was a long one, full of small informa¬ 
tion and the things that were of importance in her daily 
life. She wrote seldom, but when she wrote she took 
it for granted that her cousin’s affection was unaltered 
and that such happenings must be worth recording to 
him. John had not seen much of Lillias in the eighteen 
months since her marriage. He had not quarrelled 
with her, though he had opposed it with all the silent 
resentment of his knowledge of Colonel Thorne-—• 
unavailingly. The thing that he half feared of Lillias’ 
husband—the thing that Charley had not acknowledged 
—stood between him and his liking for the man. He 
could not look on masculine lapses of virtue in the 
same careless spirit as in Colonel Thorne’s world ; they 
did not slip by him as they might a more robust philo¬ 
sopher, and he had not Lillias’ touchstone of love to 
enable him to ignore or forgive. The horror of the 
possibility made a sore place still in his memory, and 
he had put off meeting his new kinsman, even when the 
child was born and he was invited to the christening. 
Lillias, loyal to her own people, had come down to 
Leith once or twice to see him, but she had gained in a 
wisdom that was not so much worldly as spiritual, 
and she did not try to force a meeting between her 
husband and her cousin. She had the patience to 
wait, but she never lost touch with John, the letter 
in his hand being one of the links she still patiently- 
forged. 

“I want you to see our boy—he is splendid,” she 

s 


274 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


wrote. “I shall bring him to Leith this August, and 
show him the lavender. When are you harvesting 
the crop and distilling ? We have been to Harrogate 
this year for Ted’s gout. It is a gay place in spite 
of the treatment, and I enjoyed it. The moor air 
suited the baby. He got such rosy cheeks ! We 
shall not leave London before August, because we 
have already had this change. But we are going to 
Goodwood for the races. I have a new costume of 
blue cloth, but I would not have anything very light 
because it is so extravagant. We are going to stay 
with some friends of Ted’s near Littlehampton, and 
motor over. I do wish you were going, dear John. 
I think a change of scene is good for quiet people 
like you and me, more than for most. I can stand 
the excitement of racing much better than Ted. It 
seems to do me good. And you and I were always 
alike.” 

There was nothing more in the letter-—there had 
been nothing in it all through. But that picture of 
Lillias in her dark-blue cloth “costume,” with her 
beauty wakened to brilliance by the crowds and the 
excitement of the racecourse, struck John with forcible 
truth. Lillias was right about herself. Her nature 
was so calm that it assimilated the fever of life merely 
as a tonic, and what might exhaust her husband was 
to her a stimulant. John Daish wondered if it would 
affect him in the same way—if the change and the stir 
of an unstable world would have the power to make 
him less dull and heavy with work than he was becom¬ 
ing. He knew that he was w^eary with its monotony 
at times, and that only his indomitable will kept him 


PEACE 


275 

rigidly in the same groove. It was ageing him, but 
he did not care. 

Out of the shadows came that wail again: “I can 
make you happy too—I know I can. You don’t 
want a girl like your cousin Lilli as, beautiful and kind 
though she is—she’s too like you ; you would bore each 
other. ... I’m not like that—not beautiful and not 
kind—I’m wicked sometimes, and I’m never the same 
two days together. But I’m myself. And it’s me 
that you want.” . . . Was that it, perhaps ? The 
vivid change, and contrast to his own nature ? Was 
that the stimulant, and the excitement in his life, 
“ never the same two days alike ” ? . . . 

He crushed the letter in his great hands, and started 
up with the sweat breaking out on his forehead, for 
the accursed restlessness was taking hold of him again. 
He was even glad to get back to work in the hot, 
noonday sun—he could drug his trouble with work; 
but when work was over he must needs return to his 
house and its memories, though he did not this time 
risk the old parlour. He went to the room he had 
built for the pursuit of his studies, and took down a 
treatise on soils and fertilisers, but for once even study 
failed him. The restlessness was growing intolerable, 
and he was drawn to the window in spite of himself. 

The new study looked out into the orchard, and he 
could leave the back of the farmhouse this way by a 
private door. He went out into the sunset, and walking 
aimlessly through the fruit-trees he made his way to 
the lower slopes of the lavender crop where the two-year 
bushes were planted out. The sun had reached the 
tops of the trees to his left, and beyond the smooth 


276 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


velvets of the Surrey hills were bathed in light. Then 
all his loss came back upon him, and the tears ran down 
his face in his grief and anger for what one woman had 
made him suffer. Home, and wife, and child—she had 
taken them all from him with cruel little hands, and 
nothing could give them back. He did not forgive 
her-—he never thought of purchasing his own peace 
with forgiveness ; but he longed suddenly to see her 
again—if only as he had last year, in the sick glare of 
a London street, when her frightened eyes had met 
his in one second of grievous recognition. 

Two days later Mrs. Skelton learned with secret 
misgivings that her master was going to take a few 
days'holiday before the lavender harvest, for they did 
not expect to distil before the first week in August, as 
Somers had foretold. She could not protest, she did 
not dare to dissuade him, but her sharp eyes noticed 
his worn face and she was jealous of the reason that 
he did not give for his unusual indulgence. He wanted 
a change so obviously that his choice of Worthing on 
the south coast was hopelessly reasonable, particularly 
as he had connections there. They were, indeed, 
Cousin Annie Jennings and her two self-assertive 
daughters, to whose house he had frequently been in¬ 
vited, and the housekeeper resented it none the less, 
though her suspicions of Olive and Vera were ground¬ 
less. The farmer did not care about Mrs. Jennings 
and her daughters any more than Lillias had done, and 
he was not drawn to the well-known watering place by 
Olive’s common good looks or Vera’s “stylishness ” 
(the word is strictly their mother’s as applied to 
them). 


PEACE 


2 77 


John was going to Goodwood. He wanted to see 
Lillias again in her smart gown that he knew would be 
perfect of its kind whether it were an extravagance or 
no—Colonel Thorne would see to that. He told him¬ 
self that she was right, and that he wanted distraction 
to prevent his mind brooding on things better left to 
oblivion. He would meet Ted Thorne too, if necessary, 
and shake hands as honest men might whose friend¬ 
ship need not be spoilt by one light woman-—too light 
to be worth anything but scorn. He loved Lillias-— 
he and she had been like brother and sister, and a 
man should stick to his kin. 

Deep down in his heart’s most secret place was the 
wild hope that he might see another face, once more, 
under such changed circumstances that perhaps he 
might find that he was cherishing a false image-—that 
the thing he loved was nothing, did not exist, and that 
he was once more free of the torture of that wailing 
voice and the strong attraction of his little Lavender 
Lad with the dual personality. He almost persuaded 
himself, with feverish haste, that he would have been 
disillusioned by the meeting last year had he had the 
courage to linger longer, to look at and listen to her 
more closely. If he saw her at Goodwood it would 
complete the cure. He had been to race-meetings 
before, with his father. He remembered, years ago, 
seeing a celebrated actress at one, with the paint on 
her face and a wonderful hat with ostrich feathers. To 
his boy’s fancy she had been rather beautiful and 
dreadful; but the old man had said something so 
contemptuous as not to bear recording. It was a 
likely place in which to meet a favourite of the Variety 



278 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


stage—a girl who must go to all social gatherings 
open to her class, if only as an advertisement. . . . 

Daish did not stay with the Jennings in Worthing, 
as Mrs. Skelton supposed he would do—did not even 
go to see them in their hot little house in one of the 
suburban roads that intersect the outskirts of the place. 
He went to one of the smaller hotels, and got a seat 
on one of the motor char-a-bancs that took people 
out to the race-meeting day by day. Lillias had merely 
said that she and her husband were going to Good- 
wood from the neighbourhood of Littlehampton, but 
had not mentioned whether they would be there for 
all four days or only one. John, however, booked tor 
the Cup Day as being the greatest attraction, though he 
had not written and told Lillias of his intention of 
being present. It was a long, hot drive, through 
scenery that did not appeal to his dull eyes, their sight 
being turned inwards ; and the noise and vibration 
made him weary before they reached the course. He 
did not much care. He had abandoned all pretence of 
pleasure, to himself at least, and stuck to his purpose 
with the same doggedness that he had brought to his 
work of late. It seemed as if his will only was left to 
him, while all incentive to life had gone. That dull 
sense of pain, and wrong, and being unable to forgive, 
robbed him of peace and pleasure alike, and yet he 
brooded on his wrong with morbid persistence. 

He had not been to a big race meeting for so many 
years—not since his father’s death—that the noise 
and the crowd confused him at first as it might the 
simplest yokel. But he set his steady face to the 
solving of this problem as he might a piece of new 


PEACE 


279 


machinery, and somehow it bore him towards the 
stands—the heart of the glad riot. Somewhere in 
that gay crowd might be Charley, and at any moment 
they might come face to face. Sometimes he turned 
in fancy from the encounter with a kind of cold disgust 
like pride grown white hot, and sometimes he hoped 
fiercely that they might meet if it caused her any 
shock or pain such as he had seen in her face last year 
—it was then that the devil had the best grip on him, 
and his own face was as a wicked mask. It did not 
strike him that his purpose made him remarkable any 
more than his personal beauty, but people turned to 
stare at him as at a side show. He heard an American 
call him '‘a real lovely feller ! ” and did not recognise it 
for himself; an Englishwoman say, “What a handsome 
man !—he is almost beautiful ”■—and looked vaguely 
round to see this Adonis. 

He walked up to the little box office and asked for a 
pass to the stand. That much at least he under¬ 
stood : that he must pay to reach the better class spec¬ 
tators, Lillias and her husband'—possibly Carlotta 
Edison. He did not pay to go into the paddock. He 
would have been even more out of place there, and the 
horses did not interest him'—he was not betting. They 
gave him a round pass, like a label, to hang on his coat, 
and thus decorated he was free to be a fool amongst 
other fools—or so he thought in the bitterness of his 
heart. 

He was conscious of the smell of trampled turf 
peculiar to race meetings, as soon as he got on to the 
lawns—the poor bruised grass, that was as a friend to 
him !•—and of the curious smile on every face, a smile 


28 o 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


that had nothing to do with enjoyment but was always 
looking for it. Everyone was feverishly expecting 
pleasure, but it never seemed to reach them. They 
wore that smile above money losses, and the boredom 
of talking to friends in their party for hours, and the 
physical weariness of feet that stood too long and 
walked too far, from the lawns to the stands, from the 
refreshment tents to the enclosure where car or horse 
vehicle might be awaiting them. 

Yet he also walked—up and down, to and fro, 

looking at the painted faces that might so easily be 

Charley's—that could not be Lilli as’■—and the barely 
clothed bodies of the women who seemed almost 
indecent to him. The lawns were packed, and the 
enclosure below the stands was full of hoarse voices 
and the push of human bodies trying to reach the 
rails where the bookmakers hung, shouting mono¬ 
tonously, without personal interest beyond the pursuit 
of their trade. They were all members of Tattersalls 
and would pay the winning minority; but they 
knew, as the bank knows at Monte Carlo, that 

the majority must lose. So they made their 

living. 

The din and the heat struck in Daish's ears and 
nostrils, driving him mad. He smelt the trampled 
turf with the fine, clean sense of his own meadows, and 
pushing his way almost roughly through the crowd fled 
to the stands. Up and up, past the people sitting 
under cover, until a further flight led him out into the 
upper air where he could at least breathe, unchoked 
by humanity. He climbed from step to step and seat 
to seat until he reached the highest row—— 



PEACE 


281 


And then, a miracle. Below him was the tiny 
enclosure with the hoarse bookies a million miles away, 
and the tiny green racecourse where the lean horses 
were beginning to canter past with switching tails, 
and the lawns where the tiny people were crowding 
to the rails in their gaudy gowns and wrinkleless coats. 
But beyond was surely the fairest landscape in all 
God’s earth, hazy with sun and dappled with shadow, 
a happy country that was not spoiled with cultivation, 
but allowed to rise and fall in all the glory of 
summer leafage, one green within another, and the 
blue sky at the end of all. 

Nobody had told him that Goodwood has the most 
beautiful setting of any racecourse in England, or 
that Goodwood Park is one of the most lovely things 
that riches have so far guarded against the desecration 
of hard necessity. He stood and gasped, forgetting 
himself, and Charley, and the strange crowd around 
him, for the moment; seeing nothing but those slopes 
opening and closing one behind the other with fresh 
vistas of green. He had thought his own home¬ 
stead beautiful, the cultivation of his lavender, the 
arable land and pasture in coloured sections; but 
he saw the limitation of all this as against the glory 
of a rich man’s pleasure-ground. His eyes lost them¬ 
selves in the blue distance, came back to plunge through 
the deep verdure of plantations and the splendour of 
unbroken slopes, until they grew hot with tears, 
and the cruelty in his heart seemed loosening its hold 
for the first time this two years. The little crowd 
below, the magnificent horses (so much nobler 
than the humanity for which they made sport !) the 


282 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


trivial game at which everyone seemed playing, was 
all as a breath upon the glass compared with the 
permanence of that great landscape that folded it in 
so quietly and patiently. And he too, with his vindic¬ 
tive desire to wound because he had been wounded, 
seemed suddenly mean of purpose and unimportant. 
For the bitterness of his mood was slipping from him 
without his will, and he filled his lungs with a deep 
breath of the free air as if he drew in new life. 

"There is a record crowd on Trundle Hill,” said a 
lady standing beside him. "Nobody has ever seen 
so many vehicles.” 

John turned his racing glasses on the hill with its 
motley gathering spread out to the left, as if the 
cheaper public were children grouped in one of his 
own fields, feeling that even the people lacked dignity 
in this beer-bottle, paper-bag desecration of Nature. 
Then he looked at his neighbours. Both of them were 
women whose middle-age had the retention of youth 
and a certain cachet that marked them as well-bred. 
They were speaking to each other, and paid no apparent 
attention to him. 

"I'm sure there’s a record crowd in the stands,” 
said the second woman with a little laugh. " Phew ! 
how hot it was down below ! I have seen nobody who 
looked becomingly cool—except Mrs. Thorne.” 

" How beautiful she is ! No wonder Ted Thorne 
is proud of her, despite his unexpected marriage. 
It was the wildest adventure for a man of his 
type.” 

"It seems to have worked very well, nevertheless. 
She acts like a blessed balm to his nervous excitability. 


PEACE 


283 


I do like the way she just lays her hand on his arm and 
smiles at him when he fumes ! The fret goes out of 
him exactly as it might out of a child that is com 
forted.” 

‘‘The fret would go out of most men if Mrs. Thorne 
smiled at them. She is too perfectly lovely to make 
even women jealous, because it is hopeless to think of 
rivalling her. And they have tastes in common—she 
plays bridge even better than he does, which is saying 
a good deal!—and she really enjoys this sort of 
thing ”—the speaker nodded to the course and the 
crowds. 

“I think she knows a good deal about horses. She 
told me once, w r ith the simplest manner, that her 
father had been head man in some small training 
stables before he married her mother, but that after 
his marriage he settled down to farming. No doubt 
he still bred horses, and took an interest in them, and 
the girl must have been brought up to understand 
it.” 

‘‘That is what one likes in her—that she disguises 
nothing. She wears her beauty like an unconscious 
crown, but I believe she thinks that it is Ted Thorne 
who has made her a queen by marrying her.” 

‘‘I saw the younger Thornes with them just now. 
How absurdly alike Ted and Eddie are ! 

‘‘Oh, they ought to be father and son rather than 
uncle and nephew. Mary knows, at least, exactly 
what her husband will look like when he is Colonel 
Thorne’s age.” 

‘‘Alike in character too-—•— ” 

John suddenly became aware that he was listening, 



284 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


not as an uninterested auditor, and that he had no 
right to do so. He passed the two ladies with a 
murmured apology, and made his way slowly to the 
stairs again, followed by their instant and alert scrutiny, 
though a minute before they had seemed unaware of 
him. 

“ Talk of beauty! ” said the first speaker. “ My 
dear, I never saw such a face. It is just rugged enough 
to escape the sickliness of Greek perfection. And 
what colouring! ” 

“It is a little like Lillias Thorne’s, oddly enough. 
Hasn’t she a farmer cousin ? Could that be the 
man ? ’’ 

John Daish was goingin search of Lillias and Colonel 
Thorne now that he knew them to be at hand. He felt 
that he could meet them now with nothing but kindli¬ 
ness. He had forgiven Thorne his part in the sordid 
tragedy that had darkened his own life, at least. As 
he came into the covered portion of the stand there arose 
a hoarse cheering without, which heralded the King. 
Daish could not see him come in, but he felt the onrush 
of his presence, and he moved nearer to the private 
boxes between him and the royal stand, half forced 
by the crowd, half with the intention of looking past 
the boxes to catch a glimpse of his Majesty. 

Then, suddenly, he was back in his own lavender 
fields, irresistibly carried there by that strongest aid to 
memory, scent. For someone was using the essence, 
and it came up into his nostrils pure and aromatic 
in contrast to the grosser scents that exhaled from other 
women’s gowns. He was standing close to the private 
boxes belonging to people whose names appeared over 


PEACE 285 

them on a card, and looking straight in front of him 
he saw Charley. 

It was somebody with a title who owned this box, 
and there were several people in it, but his eyes declined 
to take them in, or anyone, save the one face he knew 
now that he had come to see. She was no less extrava¬ 
gantly dressed than other women, but because she 
was Charley it did not seem to matter. Her thin, 
dark-blue draperies were curiously intersected with 
fawn and gold, and her slender legs and feet were left 
quite visible by the short skirt; but she did not wear 
the mouse-colour or soiled white affected by so many 
women—those little feet were encased in dark blue 
shoes, and the silk stockings were dark blue also. Her 
arms were bare above the elbow, the short sleeves clear 
and dark against the skin that had lost all trace of 
sunburn, and her dear cropped head was covered by a 
strange satin cap with two ears that made her look 
like a freakish faun. She sat sideways in her chair, 
swinging her foot, and close to the barrier that divided 
her friends’ box from the more general stand. A 
greater metamorphosis than this chic lady from the 
ragged little Lavender Lad could hardly be conceived. 
It struck him more than it had done last year, when 
he had had but a passing glimpse of her, singing at the 
edge of the kerb in the London street. And yet it 
was no greater than the one that took place every one 
of her nights and days, when she passed from her 
impersonations at the Halls to her private character of 
one of the most talked-of women in London. 

There was something subtly tragic in the thin, down- 
bent face, and the curious crowd, recognising her. 


286 


THE LAVENDER LAD 


might well say, “Here is a girl with a story ! ” But 
John Daish was no longer capable of criticism or of 
noting the changes in her as he stood so near to her 
and looked with strained blue eyes at the face and figure 
that were so familiar and so unfamiliar. The breath 
of the lavender stole up to him from her dress or her 
person, he did not know how, and they two were in 
the fields together again, with the sweep of scented 
purple ruffled by the wind, and the bees and the butter¬ 
flies hanging murmurous over the flowers that seemed 
to diffuse as much colour as perfume. . . . Only now 
she was a woman, and no rough lad to puzzle him with 
her secret power to draw his heart away. 

She looked up in a minute and saw him, as if his 
fixed regard compelled her—a beautiful, blond giant, 
looking at her out of a mist of faces that did not matter, 
his only distinct. He saw the strangled cry in her 
throat, and the passion and pain in the great black 
eyes—saw her little thin hands grip themselves until 
the polished nails must have cut into the flesh. She 
remembered the meeting of last year, and the lash of 
his contempt still made her flinch as if she expected it 
again. The distress in her face was so pitiful that he 
almost held out his hands as if to reassure a child. 
Was it this that he had done—to hurt her so much that 
she was still afraid after two years had passed—afraid 
of her grief and its memory, and of his hard judgment 
—his little love, with her undisciplined heart given into 
his keeping to spurn and torture ? They had never 
even kissed, but his lips kissed hers, as it were, across 
the space between them, so that the blood sprang 
suddenly to her face without cause or reason, as though 


PEACE 


287 


a god had touched it . . . and then he knew he had 
forgiven her by the relief that came upon him with the 
loss of his own strife. 

For there can be no peace without forgiveness; 


THE END 


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the Victorian era was still warm; the delightful 
madness of the century’s end held us all, and none 
more firmly than the young. And so Jarvis was a 
“devil of a fellow” in the year of his publication. He 
created a literary panic, divided a university, shocked 
one public and delighted another. One newspaper 
man called his story “a psychological study of the 
‘scarlet man’”; the Boston Transcript’s reviewer 
intimated that the author ought to be “ashamed to 
have his name on the title page” and then sent a 
marked copy of the review to the author’s uncle, 
to whom the book was boyishly dedicated! Why, 
then, the present re-issue? 


Because the story has something to justify it and 
possesses vitality. People want it as a picture of 
youth at a period of the world that will never be 
duplicated. JARVIS appeals because his is an en¬ 
during type of the young man seeking, though 
blindly, an ideal — trying, though by mistaken 
methods, to make his own synthesis of life as too 
many find it. These possibilities argue against 
changing one word of the text, and so, in response 
to numberless requests, the St. Botolph Society re- 
. issue Mr. Kauffman’s first book—JARVIS. 

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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 


53 Beacon Street 


Boston, Massachusetts 


The Heart 



By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

Author of “Earth's Enigmas” “Kindred of the 
Wild,” “Barbara Ladd,” etc. 

Cloth decorative, i2mo, $1.75 

'“j'^HIS is a story of the fisher and sailor 

folk of the Tantramar marsh country 

- 

about the head of the Bay of Fundy—a region 
of violent tides, of vast, fertile salt meadows 
fenced in from the tides by interminable bar¬ 
riers of dike—and of strenuous, adventurous 
people who occupy themselves with all the 
romantic business of the sea. The passions of 
these people are vehement, like their tides, but 
their natures have much of the depth, richness, 
and steadfastness which characterize their 
exhaustless meadows. The action turns upon 
the wisdom of the heart in discerning truth 
and love where mere reason has seen but gross 
betrayal. 

“A novel of singularly effective strength, 
luminous in literary color, rich in its passionate 
yet tender drama .”—New York Globe. 












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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 

The Gall of the South 

By ROBERT LEE DURHAM 
Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated, $1.75 


*1 


A N absorbing and intensely realistic story 
dealing with the race problem in this 
country. The principal theme is the danger 
to society from the increasing miscegenation 
of the black and white races, and the en¬ 
couragement it receives in the social amenities 
extended to negroes of distinction by persons 
prominent in politics, philanthropy and educa¬ 
tional endeavor. The moral of the story is 
not flung at the reader’s head, but is absorbed 
unconsciously, as the author (a Southern 
lawyer by the way) forecasts future possible 
events, because of the intermingling of the 
blacks and whites socially, in fascinating and 
dramatic manner. The force of the book is 
tremendous. In dramatic power it equals 
Tolstoi’s “Resurrection.” 

“The speech of Rutledge before the Senate is 
splendid. By itself it is one of the best argu¬ 
ments against social equality that has ever ap¬ 
peared. It should be printed in a pamphlet by 
itself and given world-wide distribution.”— 
Louisville Courier-Journal. 














PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 

WORKS OF 

Gabriele D’Annunzio 

S IGNOR D’ANNUNZIO is known throughout the 
world as a poet and a dramatist, but above all as a 
novelist, for it is in his novels that he is at his best. In 
poetic thought and graceful expression he has few equals 
among the writers of the day. 

He is engaged on a most ambitious work — nothing 
less than the writing of nine novels which cover the whole 
field of human sentiment. This work he has divided into 
three trilogies, and five of the nine books have been pub¬ 
lished. It is to be regretted that other labors have inter¬ 
rupted the completion of the series. 

“This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so. 
But the realism is that of Flaubert, and not of Zola. There 
is no plain speaking for the sake of plain speaking. Every 
detail is justified in the fact that it illuminates either the 
motives or the actions of the man and woman who here 
stand revealed. It is deadly true. The author holds the 
mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his own 
experiences duplicated in passage after passage, has some¬ 
thing of the same sensation as all of us know on the first 
reading of George Meredith’s ‘Egoist.’ Reading these 
pages is like being out in the country on a dark night in a 
storm. Suddenly a flash of lightning comes and every 
detail of your surroundings is revealed.”— Review of “ The 
Triumph of Death ” in the New York Evening Sun. 

The volumes published are as follows. Each I vol., 
library l2mo, cloth, _ $1.75 

THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE 
THE CHILD OF PLEASURE (II Piacere) 

THE INTRUDER (L’Innocente) 

THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH (II Trionfo della Morte) 
THE ROMANCES OF THE LIL Y 
THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS (Le Verginx delle Rocce) 
THE ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE 
THE FLAME OF LIFE (II Fuoco) 
















PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


The Making gf a Saint 

By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 
Author of 

“TheMoon and Sixpence,” “Of Human Bondageetc. 
Cloth decorative , i2mo, illustrated, $1.75 


SOMERSET MAUGHAM has attained literary fame 
^ and popularity with the reading public equalled by 
few English writers. His plays are drawing audiences in 
every city; his books are always among the best sellers; so 
that the St. Botolph Society shows excellent judgment 
in selecting his THE MAKING OF A SAINT for the 
first publication to carry the new imprint. 

‘THE MAKING OF A SAINT is a romance of medi¬ 
aeval Italy. None can resent the frankness and apparent 
brutality of the scenes through which the hero and his 
companions of both sexes are made to pass, and many will 
yield ungrudging praise to the author’s vital handling of 
the truth.”— Boston Herald. 


“An exceedingly strong story of original motive and 
design. . . . The scenes are imbued with a spirit of 
frankness . . . and in addition there is a strong dramatic 
flavor.”— Philadelphia Press. 


“A sprightly tale abounding in adventures, and redolent 
with the spirit of mediceval Italy.”— Brooklyn Times. 


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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


1 


The Sands of Pleasure 

By FILSON YOUNG 


Author of “The Happy Motorist,” “Venus and Cupid, an 

Impression,” etc. 

Cloth decorative, i2mo, $1.65 

< < f B 'HE consciousness of doing something wrong would 
JL make it ugly.” 

“Morality is only an underbred substitute for decency.” 

These two quotations from THE SANDS OF PLEA¬ 
SURE are indicative of this unusual story and the more 
unusual point of view. “I had a story to tell,” wrote the 
author. “I have told it as well as I knew how—that 
ought to be enough, and more than enough, for me to say 
about this book. But some have decreed, with what 
wisdom I do not pretend to measure, that this subject and 
that, very urgent though they may be in the life of man, 
shall not be written or read about in books designed 
merely for the entertainment of his mind. I have disobeyed 
this decree, and cast a great part of my tale in a region held 
to be out of bounds—Bohemia.” 

It is a story of Bohemia, but written with the healthy 
enthusiasm of youth for all there is in life. Much of the 
greatest the world has produced in art and literature has 
been bom of the Montmarte and the Quartier Latin, but 
little of worth has been written about them. Murger’s 
“La Vie de Boheme” was a great romance. Here is a fine, 
realistic novel.— “Ne creator nk creatura mai—fu senza 
amore.” 


“It is tense, strong, narrative, and descriptive writing 
of a sort that is wholly admirable.”— London Graphic. 

“Mr. Young blends the artistic with the realistic and 
conjures up scenes which can never be forgotten by the 
reader, and no greater praise than that could be given to 
a writer.”— Western Morning News, Plymouth, England. 












PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


*1 


Omar, tke 1 entmaker 

A ROMANCE OF OLD PERSIA 

By NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 

Author of “The Spell of Switzerland” “TheRubaiyat 
of Omar Khayyam, Multivariorum Edition” etc. 
Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated, $1.65 

O MAR, THE TENTMAKER’ is real litera¬ 
ture, and the fame of the book should 
grow with the years. Had the writer never pro¬ 
duced anything save this volume his life would 
have been well worth while, for this romance of 
old Persia is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.” 
—Vicksburg Evening Post. 


Captain 



racasse 


Translated from the French of Gautier 


Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated with ten illustra¬ 
tions by Victor A. Scarles and an elaborate jacket 
with an illustration in full color by Frank T. 
Merrill, $1.75 


T HERE is a real satisfaction in turning to this 
genuine old fantasy of love, adventure and 
heroism. It is a belated blossom of the romantic 
period in fiction—not a forced and artificial bloom 
put forth in response to popular demand.” — St 
Paul Pioneer Press. 


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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF 
MARRIAGE 

PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE 

By HO NO RE DE BALZAC 

Edited, with Introduction by J. Walker McSpaddcn 
Cloth, large i2mo, illustrated, $1.90 

M ARRIAGE is not an institution of nature. 
The family in the East is entirely different 
from the family in the West. Man is the servant 
of Nature, and the institutions of Society are grafts, 
not spontaneous growths of Nature. Laws are made 
to suit manners, and manners vary. Marriage must 
therefore undergo the gradual development towards 
perfection to which all human affairs submit.” 

These words, pronounced in the presence of the 
Conseil d’Etat by Napoleon, during the discussion 
of the civil code, produced a profound impression on 
Balzac—universally conceded to be the greatest 
novelist of France if not of the world—and sug¬ 
gested to his mind the writing of this “history of 
human thought” in which he sets forth matters 
which represent what everybody thinks about mar¬ 
riage, but no one dares to say. The popular demand 
for Balzac’s works has had a tremendous impetus 
within the last few' years, and the re-issue of THE 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE, at this time, 
when America in particular and the world in general 
“views with alarm” the prevalency of divorce, has 
heightened interest in this greatest of all works on 
the fascinating subject of marriage. 





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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 


Boston, Massachusetts 


53 Beacon Street 


Edward 



A ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEAS 


By LOUIS BECKE 


Cloth decorative, 12mo y illustrated, SI.65. 

'npHE rediscovery of Herman Melville, mariner and mys 


tic, together with the marked popularity of South Sea 
Island travel and fiction at the present time, makes it 
timely to call attention to another writer of sea tales, of 
almost equal merit, Louis Becke. 

George Louis Becke, born in New South Wales, was a 
trader in the South Sea Islands from 1870 to 1893. When 
he turned to writing his fame was instantaneous. He still 
remains the brightest figure in Australian letters. His style 
is that of Stevenson, and his narratives, many of which 
have the intensity of autobiography, and the authoritative¬ 
ness of personal experience, are as vivid as Conrad’s. His 
books are born of the South Seas they represent. 

EDWARD BARRY is the story of a young man, mate 
of a small brig, engaged in the pearl fisheries. Strong and 
even tragic, as is the novel in the main, the love and devo¬ 
tion of a woman is portrayed with delicate feeling. Nowhere 
does drama and romance flourish as in the South Seas, and 
Louis Becke is one of its most appealing writers. 

“For a rousing, absorbing and withal a truthful tale 
of the South Seas, commend me to Louis Becke. 
EDWARD BARRY is one of the best, and the love 
romance that runs through it will be appreciated by 
every one.”— Philadelphia North Avierican. 



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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

S3 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


TWO POWERFUL NOVELS BY 


GUSTAV FRENSSEN 


Each one volume , cloth decorative , i2mo, illustrated , per 
volume, $1.75. 

JORN UHL. Translated by F. S. Delmer. 

€ < T ORN UHL ” is the most powerful story of modern 
German life, and was the literary sensation of 
Europe. Over two hundred thousand copies were sold 
within eighteen months of issue. The story touches upon 
many of the social and ethical problems of the day. This 
novel stands as a book of real worth, a sincere criticism of 
life, and a poet’s interpretation of the life of man and the 
wonder of the universe of God. 

“This is Mr. Frenssen’s best-known work, and one that 
could not have too many readers in this country. The 
simple and fine story of Jorn’s efforts to save the family 
acres has a measure of philosophy and poetic vision that 
lift it quite above any other study in recent times.”— 
New York Evening Post. 


HOLYLAND. Translated by M. A. Hamilton. 



HE exclusive authorized translation of “ Holyland,” 


A pronounced by competent critics to be the greatest 
novel of modern times. The scenes and characters are 
drawn from among the humble sea-faring folk who live on 
the borders of the German Ocean. 

“A remarkable novel, judged by whatever standard, 
one proving that a really great novel knows no one country 
alone, but must approach the universal in appeal.”— New 
York Globe. 













PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 


Boston, Massachusetts 


53 Beacon Street 


What Allah Wills 


A ROMANCE OF MOROCCO 

By IRWIN L. GORDON, F. R. G. S. 


Cloth decorative, i2mo, illustrated by William Van Dresser, 


$1.65. 


STORY of love and adventure, full of the quivering 
atmosphere of the Moorish East.”— New York 



World. 


“The high purpose of ‘What Allah Wills’ lifts it out of 
the realm of ordinary romance and stamps it as the most 
important novel of the Moslem world since Robert 
Hichens’ ‘Garden of Allah.’ ” —• Philadelphia Public 
Ledger. 


Servitude 


By IRENE OSGOOD 


Cloth decorative i2mo, $1.65. 

“ 'T'HE author shows a great gift of originality and 


A dramatic insight. It is a story that will hold firmly 
the attention of even the veteran novel reader to the end.” 
— Brooklyn Eagle. 

“The novel teems with romance. Few books unite such 
a pleasing style with so great a wealth of exciting romance 
and interesting adventure.” — Chicago Record-Herald . 













PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


The 

Mysteries of Paris 

By EUGENE SUE 

Illustrated with thirty-two etchings , six 
volumes , cloth , gilt top , per set $12.00 


A LTHOUGH many years have elapsed 
since the death of Eugene Sue, no fitting 
edition of this great author’s masterpiece has 
ever been published; and yet he stands today the 
third member of the great triumvirate of French 
authors who not only did much for the litera¬ 
ture of France, but did their share toward 
revolutionizing many old ideas. If choice of 
the three greatest French novels were made, 
the selection would undoubtedly consist of 
“Les Miserables,” “The Three Musketeers,” 
and “The Mysteries of Paris.” 












PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


Celebrated Crimes 

By ALEXANDER DUMAS 

New edition in four volumes, cloth, gilt top, with many 
illustrations, etchings and duogravures from rare prints and 
from original drawings by Edmund Id. Garrett. With an 
introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole, and complete index, 
$10.00. 

T HIS edition presents for the first time, in a uniform 
set, the complete text of Dumas’ wonderful master¬ 
piece, as it includes CELEBRATED CRIMES OF 
THE RUSSIAN COURT, translated by Mickael Gort- 
shakov. The author was scrupulously accurate, giving 
every incident according to the evidence obtained by his 
exhaustive research and the translating and editing have 
been done with skill and judgment, the result being a work 
of merit, not only as literature but as history. 

The romantic portions of the history of Europe, from 
Russia to Scotland, are given as only Dumas could write. 
The work includes the crimes and intrigues, the causes 
celebres, of the royal courts of Europe, portrayed in the 
most remarkable manner. 


“The reader will gain many powerful impressions of 
the secrets of court life, of the evils of absolute autocracy 
and its inevitable degeneration . . . Alive with interest 
. . . not a dull page in it.”— Brooklyn Eagle. 













PUBLICATIONS OF THE 

53 Beacon Street 


ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

Boston, Massachusetts 


LOVE AFFAIRS 
OF GREAT MUSICIANS 

By RUPERT HUGHES 

Author of “Contemporary American Composers,”etc. 

Cloth decorative, 8vo, profusely illustrated, $4.00 

A COLLECTION of romances of the world’s 
most noted musicians. From Beethoven, never 
under banns, but always in love, to Bach, the very 
much married, the home-maker; from Tschaikovski, 
who was mortally afraid of his own wife, to 
Handel, who cared for no woman, but terrorized 
many—these love affairs, and scores of others, 
make up a chronicle of both musical and amatory 
interest. 

A partial list of the chapters includes: 

Bach, the Patriarch 

Gluck, the Domestic 

Rousseau, the Confessor 

Beethoven: The Great Bumblebee 

Von Weber—the Rake Reformed 

Piccinni, the Amiable 

The Felicities of Mendelssohn 

Papa and Mama Haydn 

Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck 

Musicians as Lovers 













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PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY 

53 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 


Odes from the Divan of Hafiz 


By RICHARD LeGALLIENNE 
Author of 

The Quest of the Golden Girl ,” etc. 


U 


One volume, decorative hoards . $3-00 

The same, Persian ooze leather , decorative . 3.00 

M R. RICHARD LeGALLIENNE’S rendering of 
“The Odes of Hafiz,” as in the case of his para¬ 
phrase of Omar Khayyam, has been made from literal 
prose versions of the poet, supplemented by his own 
fancy. While he has kept as closely as he deems neces¬ 
sary to his original, his aim, as before, has been to make 
English poetry, rather than a joyless shadow of a great 
classic. He offers this rendering in the first place as 
poetry, in the second as translation; but at the same time 
his aim has been, as faithfully as in him lies, truly to 
interpret the great Persian poet to English readers, so 
that the total result of his endeavor is really — if not 
literally — Hafiz. 

“Of all the renderings of ‘ The Odes of Hafiz ’ which 
we have seen, Mr. LeGallienne’s is by all odds the best 
adapted to give the English reader an adequate idea of 
the poetry of Hafiz.”— Literary Digest. 


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